PERSIAN 
MINIATURES 

WINTER 


THE  SUBLIME  PORTE  OF  KAZVIN 


PERSIAN 
MINIATURES 

By  H.  G.  DW1GHT 

J  \\ 


AUTHOR  OF      STAMBOUL  NIGHTS 


ILLUSTRATED  WITH  DRAWINGS 
BY 

WILFRED  J.  JONES 


GARDEN  CITY  NEW  YORK 

DOUBLEDAY,  PAGE  &  COMPANY 
1917 


Copyright,  79/7,  by 
DOUBLEDAY,  PAGE  &  COMPANY 

All  rights  reserved,  including  thai  of 

translation  into  foreign  languages, 

including  the  Scandinavian 


FOR 

CLARA  KHANUM  AND  CECIL  SAH'B 

"/  have  eaten  your  bread  and  salt, 
I  lave  drunk  your  water  and  wine, 
The  deaths  you  died  I  have  watched  beside 
And  the  lives  that  you  lived  were  mine." 


CONTENTS 

CHAPTER  PAGE 

Confidential xi 

I.     Caucasian  Prologue 3 

II.     Anabasis 20 

III.  Kazvin 42 

IV.  The  Country  of  the  Sky 62 

V.     The  Bazaar 71 

VI.     Leaf  from  the  Book  of  Ser  Marco  Polo  .  89 

VII.      Persian  Apparatus 92 

VIII.     Jimmy  &  Co 113 

IX.     The  Great  Slaughter 121 

X.     Old  Wine  in  New  Bottles 151 

XI.     The  Factory 177 

XII.     The  Satrap 188 

XIII.  About  Rug  Books  (But  to  Be  Skipped  by 

Those  Who  Neither  Read  nor  Write 

Them) 196 

XIV.  The  Gramophone 236 

XV.     The  Sea  of  Sciences 243 

XVI.     Wild  Boar 258 

XVII.     Vignette  of  a  Time  Gone  By     ....  283 

XVIII.     Avicenna 288 

XIX.     The  Caravan 324 

vii 


ILLUSTRATIONS 
The  Sublime  Porte  of  Kazvin    ....       Frontispiece 


PAGE 


Colophon:  Persian  prayer  rug  in  the  Metropolitan 
Museum     (See  title  page) 

Headpiece 3 

Boats  at  Enzeli 20 

Pilgrims 39 

The  Tomb  of  Prince  Hosein 42 

Hamadan  Street 73 

The  Office 77 

A  Court  in  the  Bazaar 85 

Pot  Shops 87 

The  Tomb  of  Esther  and  Mordecai 91 

Ye  Laundress 103 

Ye  Butler 107 

The  Flagellants 122 

Zobeida's  Litter  . 145 

A  Mourner  of  Kerbela 149 

Rug  Weavers 177 

Hamadan  and  Mt.  Elvend 196 

The  Fruit  of  the  Knowledge  of  Good  and  Evil      .  243 

The  Tomb  of  Avicenna 288 

Camels                                               324 


IX 


CONFIDENTIAL 

"In  good  sooth,  my  masters,  this  is  no  door.     But  it  is  a 
little  window  which  looketh  into  a  great  world!' 

NO,  dubious  reader.  Your  book  is  no  treatise 
on  those  little  pictures,  sometimes  gaily 
coloured,  sometimes  faintly  sketched,  of  tur- 
baned  princes  and  flowering  trees  and  dancing 
gazelles,  which  it  has  become  so  much  the  fashion  to 
collect — and  to  forge.  It  contains  not  even  one  photo- 
graph of  a  true  Persian  miniature;  though  if  the  war  had 
not  made  it  impossible  for  me  to  get  hold  of  a  certain 
portrait  by  the  great  Behzad,  I  would  have  borrowed  it  to 
reflect  distinction  on  my  pages.  And  having  learned  by 
pungent  experience  that  ye  reviewer  is  somewhat  given  to 
jumping  from  a  title  to  a  conclusion,  and  then  visiting  his 
disappointment  upon  ye  scribbler's  head,  I  make  it  my 
duty  to  give  warning  as  loudly  as  I  may  that  no  Orientalist 
need  waste  time  in  turning  over  these  pages.  They  con- 
tain nothing  but  a  collection  of  sketches  in  printer's  ink, 
very  d'ecousus,  as  that  good  friend  of  mine  among  their 
worships  the  editors  said  who  best  understands  the  sub- 
tle art  of  gilding  a  pill,  in  praying  me  to  excuse  him  the 
honour  of  presenting  a  few  of  them  to  his  public — very 
"unsewn,"  illustrating  in  their  random  way  but  one  small 
corner  of  Persia,  and  designed  not  at  all  to  catch  the  eye 

xi 


PERSIAN  MINIATURES 

of  the  serious-minded.*  For  my  experience  of  the  Land 
of  the  Sun  was  such  as  might  have  been  gained  by  a 
mechanic  sent  out  to  instal  a  force-pump  for  a  travelled 
Khan,  or  by  a  gentleman's  gentleman  in  the  diplomatic 
service  whose  master  fell  ill  by  the  way  and  never  reached 
Tehran.  I  had  friends;  the  destiny  of  my  friends  led 
them  to  Hamadan;  they  were  good  enough  to  invite  me  to 
follow  them;  I  did  so  a  little  more  promptly,  I  fear,  than 
they  expected.  The  rest  was  pure  cacoetles  scribendi— 
aggravated  by  the  fact  that  I  happened  to  be  in  that 
remote  theatre  of  the  Push  to  the  East  when  the  German 
War  broke  out. 

I  can  admit,  however,  that  I  thought  twice  before  suc- 
cumbing to  this  incurable  itch  of  the  writer  to  make 
copy  out  of  what  he  sees  and  hears,  and  that  in  the  end 
I  made  next  to  nothing  of  any  journalistic  timeliness.  If 
I  had  been  an  Englishman,  perhaps,  I  would  not  have 
ventured  to  add  a  volume  even  half  as  portly  as  it  might 
have  been  to  a  bibliography  so  rich  as  that  of  Persia.  Yet 
I  have  never  been  of  those  who  look  at  English  and 
American  literature  as  at  two  separate  things.  When 
the  East  India  Company  was  formed,  when  Abbas  the 
Great  invited  the  British  factors  to  help  him  drive  the 
Portuguese  out  of  the  Persian  Gulf,  my  ancestors  had  not 
emigrated  to  New  England;  and  when  they  did  they  only 
secured  my  title  to  share  in  the  great  Anglo-Saxon  tradi- 
tion of  the  gentleman  adventurer.  Not  that  I  mean  to 
qualify  them  as  gentlemen,  or  my  own  slight  and  com- 
fortable experience  of  Persia  as  an  adventure.  But  hav- 
ing had  a  far  more  prolonged  experience  of  other  parts  of 
the  Near  East,  I  take  a  particular  interest  in  that  exten- 
sive literature  of  our  language  which  interprets  the  East 

xii 


CONFIDENTIAL 

to  the  West.  It  has  counted  for  not  a  little,  I  am  per- 
suaded, in  the  unparalleled  success  of  Great  Britain  as  a 
colonial  power.  And  I  must  further  admit  that  I  have 
been  unable  to  put  away  from  myself  an  ambition  of 
contributing  my  mite  to  that  literature. 

As  an  American  I  have  felt  at  greater  liberty  to  do  so 
because  our  half  of  the  race  has  grown  up  in  a  greater 
isolation.  Much  of  the  anomaly  of  our  position  during 
the  early  part  of  the  war  was  due  to  the  simple  fact  that 
many  good  Americans  seriously  believe  the  world  to  have 
been  created  in  1492.  If  we  took  cognisance  at  all  of 
the  hypothesis  that  there  might  be  a  world  outside  our 
own,  we  saw  it  from  too  great  a  distance  to  credit  its 
reality,  or  to  imagine  ourselves  as  bound  with  it  in  one 
fate.  And  we  attached  to  a  school  atlas  something  of 
the  finality  claimed  for  Holy  Writ.  This  yellow  patch 
was  literally  Austria.  That  crimson  splotch  was  no  more 
than  Germany,  and  must  have  been  so  from  all  time. 
And  Strasbourg  and  Serayevo  were  as  integral  parts  of 
them  as  Potsdam  or  Schonbrunn.  All  too  slowly  did 
what  was  going  on  in  Europe  come  to  mean  anything  to 
us,  because  we  knew  too  little  what  underlay  it  all. 

As  for  so  remote  a  corner  of  the  world  as  Persia,  it  is 
too  much  to  expect  that  many  of  my  own  fellow-country- 
men, at  any  rate,  are  ready  to  believe  in  its  existence. 
Still,  anything  that  attempts  to  make  even  so  shadowy  a 
land  a  little  less  shadowy  is  perhaps  worth  trying.  It 
was  not  for  me,  of  course,  to  do  so  in  any  encyclopedic 
way.  Too  many  scholars  now  living  have  written  of  the 
history,  the  geography,  the  literature,  the  antiquities,  the 
resources,  and  the  politics  of  Persia  for  a  mere  impression- 
ist to  compete  with  them  in  their  own  generation.  The 

xiii 


PERSIAN  MINIATURES 

Persian  bibliography,  however,  contains  other  names, 
like  those  of  the  inimitable  old  Sir  Thomas  Herbert,  of 
Sir  John  Malcolm,  of  "Hajji  Baba"  Morier,  and  of  Lord 
Curzon's  enviable  relative  Lord  Zouche.  Their  books, 
or  some  of  their  books,  while  less  compendious  are  per- 
haps more  successful  in  evoking  the  true  I  rank  flavour. 
For  they  exemplify  the  saying  of  Sadi  that  "a  little  is  a 
proof  of  much,  and  a  sample  as  good  as  an  ass-load." 
And  they  possess  a  quality  which  has  always  seemed  to 
me  highly  admirable  in  a  book,  and  a  surprisingly  un- 
common one :  that — How  shall  I  put  it?  That  it  should 
not  be  too  hard  to  read!  In  fact,  if  I  were  to  turn  out  the 
dregs  of  confession,  I  should  have  to  admit  that  that  is 
the  kind  of  book  I  would  most  like  to  write.  But  it 
will  please  me  well  enough  if  people  who  have  been  to 
Persia  find  it  possible  to  turn  over  these  pages  with  no 
more  than  the  usual  amount  of  derision.  And  if  a  few 
who  have  not  been  to  Persia  find  here  enough  of  the  look, 
the  light,  the  incommunicable  tang  of  those  ancient  up- 
lands, to  explore  the  more  serious  literature  of  which  I 
have  spoken,  to  discover  how  far  from  simple  is  it  for 
East  and  West  to  be  just  to  one  another,  these  loose 
sketches  will  not  have  been  stitched  between  covers  in 
vain. 

If  I  have  not  fringed  the  bottoms  of  my  pages  with 
notes,  it  has  not  been  solely  out  of  anxiousness  not  to 
enfuriate  the  typesetter.  I  must  here  acknowledge,  how- 
ever, my  great  indebtedness  to  those  whose  ampler  knowl- 
edge of  Persia  has  so  constantly  come  to  the  rescue  of  my 
own.  I  have  borrowed  right  and  left  from  Browne, 
Curzon,  Le  Strange,  and  Sykes,  as  well  as  from  Mr. 
Stanley  Lane-Poole,  whose  "Mohammedan  Dynasties" 

xiv 


CONFIDENTIAL 

is  an  indispensable  compass  to  the  wanderer  through  the 
maze  of  Near  Eastern  allusions.  I  have  also  helped 
myself  without  scruple  from  the  Hakluyt  Society's  "Vene- 
tian Travellers  in  Persia,"  from  the  French  translations 
of  Yakut  and  Masudi,  and  from  other  authorities  great 
and  small  more  numerous  than  in  a  book  of  this  kind  it  is 
fitting  to  specify.  It  would  be  unfitting,  however,  if  I 
did  not  specify  how  much  information,  particularly  about 
rugs,  I  owe  to  my  friend  Mr.  A.  C.  Edwards  of  Hamadan 
and  many  other  places,  who  if  he  chose  could  write  a 
more  competent  rug  book  than  has  yet  been  written. 
Mr.  Henry  Hildebrand  of  Hamadan  was  likewise  good 
enough  to  give  me  valuable  hints  on  the  same  subject, 
while  Dr.  and  Mrs.  J.  W.  Cook  of  Tehran  have  taken  the 
trouble  to  clear  up  for  me  various  doubtful  points  of 
orthography.  Indeed  if  I  were  to  name  all  those  in  Persia 
and  out  from  whom  I  have  received  facts  and  kindnesses 
without  number,  I  would  have  to  make  a  catalogue  too 
long  to  print.  But  I  cannot  omit  thanking,  for  their 
encouragement,  help,  and  suggestions,  Mr.  Eugene  F. 
Saxton,  my  collaborator  Mr.  Wilfred  J.  Jones,  and  Mr. 
and  Mrs.  F.  Mortimer  Clapp.  And  let  me  here  express 
my  obligations  to  the  editors  of  Asia,  The  Bookman,  and 
The  Century,  for  permitting  me  to  republish  four  chap- 
ters or  parts  of  chapters  which  first  saw  the  light  in  their 
magazines. 

There  remains  to  say  a  word  with  regard  to  the  spelling 
followed  in  this  book.  The  question  of  rendering  the 
sound  of  Persian  words  and  names  in  English  is  one  of 
peculiar  difficulty,  because  at  least  three  of  the  Persian 
consonants  are  unknown  to  us,  while  the  letter  a  is  quite 
as  variable  in  Persian  as  it  is  in  English.  The  trouble  is 

xv 


PERSIAN  MINIATURES 

that  those  variations  are  not  quite  identical,  and  that  one 
of  them,  in  Persian,  being  officially  described  as  equivalent 
to  the  vowel  sound  of  the  English  word  cat,  really  verges 
toward  the  vowel  sound  of  bet.  And  officially  neither 
e  nor  o  exist  in  Persian.  So  there  you  have  one  prolific 
cause  of  an  unending  row  between  two  camps  of  orthog- 
raphers.  The  Orientalists,  on  the  whole,  have  the  best 
of  it;  for  they  transliterate  according  to  a  fixed  system, 
paying  no  attention  to  English  phonetics  and  denying 
the  letters  e  and  o  as  the  Pope  did  the  rotation  of  the  earth. 
Eppur  si  muove  !  answered  Galileo.  And  my  ear  has  too 
long  been  sharpened  to  the  sound  of  strange  tongues  for 
me  to  be  frightened  by  Professor  Browne  when  he  cries 
out  against  the  barbarity  of  putting  an  e  or  an  o  into  a 
name  taken  out  of  Arabic  letters.  The  Turks  quite  in- 
controvertibly  make  the  sounds,  if  they  lack  the  letters. 
The  Persians  pronounce  them  less  distinctly;  yet  for  the 
novice  to  take  Professor  Browne's  word  for  it  that  Enzeli, 
for  instance,  should  be  Anzali,  is  to  risk  straying  in  two 
equally  false  directions.  Let  it  not  be  gathered  that  I 
am  so  foolish  as  to  argue  against  Professor  Browne's 
spelling  in  Professor  Browne's  books.  It  is  the  more 
scholarly  and  among  Orientalists  it  is  indispensable. 
But  why  should  I,  who  am  no  Orientalist  and  who  do  not 
write  for  Orientalists,  mystify  my  reader  and  set  the 
heart  of  the  compositor  against  me  by  distinguishing 
between  k  and  q,  by  writing  db  when  I  mean  ?,  or  w  when 
I  mean  u,  and  by  strewing  my  book  with  dark  dots  and 
accents? 

I  shall  not.  For  it  seems  to  me  highly  advisable  to 
discourage  the  layman  from  adding  to  the  chaos  which 
already  reigns  in  his  spelling  of  Oriental  names.  I4  there- 

xvi 


CONFIDENTIAL 

fore  choose  the  simpler  system  of  the  Royal  Geographical 
Society.  If  it  has  its  own  conventions,  they  are  at  least 
more  familiar  and  more  comprehensible.  The  conso- 
nants are  pronounced  as  in  English,  except  that  c,  g,  and  5 
never  encroach  upon  the  sounds  of  k,  j,  or  ?.  The  vowels 
are  pronounced  as  in  Italian,  each  separately  and  none 
silent.  I  have  made  one  concession  to  the  Orientalists 
in  retaining  the  I  after  a  final  e,  because  nothing  on  earth 
will  make  the  average  Anglo-Saxon  pronounce  Sine,  for 
example,  otherwise  than  as  the  mystic  consort  of  Cosine; 
whereas  he  will  be  obliged  to  make  two  syllables  out  of 
Sineh.  I  have  further  borrowed,  for  certain  Turkish 
words,  the  German  umlaut  for  a  u  which  does  not  exist 
in  our  language,  and  the  French  circumflex  for  a  still  more 
unpronounceable  Turkish  /.  Otherwise  I  make  no  use 
of  accents,  for  in  Persian  and  Turkish  the  stress  falls 
almost  invariably  on  the  last  syllable. 

One  unfortunate  consequence  of  this  system  is  that  I 
add  a  new  variation  to  an  already  too  various  name: 
that  of  the  poet  Firdeusi.  This,  to  an  enraged  Oriental- 
ist, is  a  barbarity  more  shocking  than  Mehmed.  Yet 
it  comes  much  nearer  the  true  sound  than  his  Firdawsi, 
or  the  popularised  Firdowsi,  or  the  perhaps  most  com- 
mon Firdausi — unless  you  remember,  which  you  won't 
unless  you  know  Persian,  that  that  a  is  a  cattish  a  verg- 
ing on  e.  The  Italian  eu  hits  it  almost  exactly.  But  I 
must  end  by  confessing  that  consistency  is  too  rare  a  jewel 
for  me  always  to  keep  hold  of  it.  If  I  say  Enzeli,  as 
Professor  Browne  very  aptly  points  out,  I  should  also 
say  Tebriz  and  Hemedan.  Well,  I  don't!  For  usage 
seems  to  have  taken  the  matter  out  of  my  hands — as  in 
other  cases  have  ignorance  or  the  idiosyncrasies  of  the 

xvii 


PERSIAN  MINIATURES 

English  tongue.  And  Tehran?  As  to  that,  it  is  high  time 
English-speaking  people  stopped  using  a  French  spelling 
for  a  name  which  really  has  only  two  syllables.  After  all, 
they  will  not  be  so  upset  as  if  I  had  followed  Professor 
Browne  and  said  Tihran! 


xvm 


PERSIAN 
MINIATURES 


CAUCASIAN  PROLOGUE 

Here  thou  at  greater  Ease  than  hee 

Mayst  behold  what  hee  did  see; 

Thou  participates  his  Gaines, 

But  hee  alone  reserves  the  Paines. 

Hee  traded  not  with  Luker  sotted. 

Hee  went  for  Knowledge  and  hee  got  it. 

Then  thank  the  Author:  Thanks  is  light, 

Who  hath  presented  to  thy  Sight 

Seas,  Lands,  Men,  Beasts,  Fishes,  and  Birds, 

The  rarest  that  the  World  ajjoords. 

The  Lord  Fayrfax,  Baron  of  Cameron,  on  Sir  Thomas  Herbert, 
his: 

SOME  YEERES  TRAVELS  INTO  DIVERS  PARTS  OF  ASIA  AND  AFFRIQUE 

WE  HAD  formed  the  habit,  during  a  week 
of  leisurely  Black  Sea  travel,  of  waking 
up  every  morning  off  a  town  of  low  red 
roofs  and  slim  white  minarets,  set  under 
a  high  green  coast.     Batum  also  sat  under  a  high  green 
coast — if  so  much  higher  than  usual  as  to  be  tipped  with 
snow.     But  instead  of  anchoring  offshore  and  bargaining 

3 


PERSIAN  MINIATURES 

with  the  crews  of  tall-prowed  Turkish  boats,  we  tied 
up  to  a  quay  and  walked  ashore  with  no  more  ado  than  a 
brief  session  with  my  lords  of  the  customs  and  the  pass- 
port bureau.  And  more  conspicuous  than  any  minaret 
Were  the  syringe  domes  of  a  Russian  cathedral.  Whereby 
it  appeared  that  something  had  happened  in  Batum  since 
it  stopped  being  a  Turkish  town  in  1878. 

That  fact  was  still  more  apparent  when  I  stepped  into 
a  true  Russian  droshky,  driven  by  a  true  Russian  coach- 
man— a  kind  of  centaur  so  at  one  with  his  box  that  no 
human  being  could  tell  where  coachman  stopped  and 
carriage  began — and  rattled  away  over  true  Russian 
cobblestones.  I  suspect,  however,  that  if  I  had  had  the 
courage  to  scratch  that  coachman  I  would  have  found  a 
Georgian,  if  not  a  Tartar.  In  the  Caucasus  whenever 
they  don't  know  what  to  call  a  man  they  call  him  a  Geor- 
gian. That  they  are  not  always  right  I  once  or  twice 
proved  by  asking  the  man  himself  and  finding  out  that 
he  was  what  I  thought;  namely,  a  Laz.  Those  quick- 
tempered people  are  almost  as  common  in  Batum  as 
they  are  in  Trebizond,  and  they  look  enough  like  Geor- 
gians to  be  their  cousins.  They  all  wear  the  same  top 
boots,  the  same  slack  breeches,  the  same  short  jackets, 
and  the  same  long-flapped  hoods  with  a  tassel  at  the 
point — which  serve  them  equally  for  turbans,  mufflers, 
or  capes.  The  big  black  policemen  of  Batum  dress  like 
that,  being  Georgians.  I  wondered  if  the  house  boys  of 
the  Hotel  de  France  were,  too.  They  wore  black  Russian 
blouses  and  spoke  no  known  language.  But  there  are 
still  plenty  of  Turks  left  in  the  town,  as  I  discovered  while 
prowling  around  before  it  was  time  to  take  my  evening 
train. 


CAUCASIAN  PROLOGUE 

They  say  that  a  famous  bridge  over  the  Golden  Horn 
is  a  good  place  from  which  to  admire  the  nations  of  the 
earth.  It  struck  me  that  the  railway  station  of  Batum 
might  be  a  better  one,  when  I  went  there  in  charge  of  an 
Armenian  porter  from  the  hotel.  A  good  many  among 
the  crowd  that  packed  the  waiting  rooms  were  his  own 
fellow  countrymen.  They  were  darker  and  fierier  looking 
people  than  the  Armenians  I  had  seen  before,  with  an 
odd  look  of  the  Latin  Quarter  about  many  of  them.  One 
group  of  young  men  in  broad-brimmed  hats,  string  ties, 
and  peg-top  trousers  stood  tightly  under  an  electric  light 
around  an  intense  young  woman  with  a  slight  moustache, 
who  read  aloud  to  them  out  of  a  brand  new  book  of 
poetry.  How  do  I  know?  It  rhymed!  But  they  were 
there,  my  porter  told  me,  to  do  honour  to  the  memory  of 
a  certain  Armenian  philanthropist  who  had  recently 
died  in  Constantinople  and  whose  body,  having  been 
brought  to  Batum  on  my  ship,  was  about  to  be  taken  to 
Tiflis  by  my  train,  thence  to  be  sent  for  burial  to  the  great 
Armenian  monastery  of  Echmiadzin.  Sure  enough,  at 
the  end  of  the  train  stood  a  freight  car  which  had  been 
turned  into  a  chapelle  ardente,  with  flowers  and  candles 
standing  around  a  black  catafalque.  However,  Armen- 
ians were  but  a  fraction  of  that  polyglot  company,  among 
whom  were  Greeks,  Turks,  Tartars,  the  inevitable  Geor- 
gian, and  the  equally  inevitable  Russian,  together  with 
such  exotic  specimens  as  the  tall  Swede  who  had  travelled 
most  of  the  length  of  the  Black  Sea  in  my  steamer  chair, 
the  fat  German  who  had  left  no  stone  unturned  to  find 
out  where  I  was  going  and  why,  and  an  English  agent 
of  the  American  Licorice  Company. 

The  train  in  which  my  Armenian  presently  deposited 

5 


PERSIAN  MINIATURES 

me  was  the  St.  Petersburg  express;  for  to  get  from  Batum 
to  St.  Petersburg  by  rail — Petrograd  had  still  to  be  in- 
vented— you  must  cross  the  Transcaucasus  to  Derbend 
and  then  come  back  to  Rostov  on  the  north  side  of  the 
mountains,  before  striking  up  country  for  Moscow.  It 
was  the  usual  roomy  Russian  train,  thanks  to  the  broader 
gauge  of  the  Russian  rails,  and  my  compartment  was  the 
roomier  because  the  seats  in  it  were  numbered.  What 
interested  me  first,  however,  was  the  view.  That  was 
striking  enough  in  the  moonlight  as  we  ran  along  the  edge 
of  the  sea  toward  the  ghostly  heights  of  the  Caucasus. 
Then  I  began  to  be  interested  in  my  fellow  travellers. 
They  turned  out  to  be  all  Greeks  and  all  of  one  party,  on 
their  way  to  a  wedding  in  Tiflis.  This  information  was 
vouchsafed  to  me  by  the  bride  herself,  in  an  English 
much  more  creditable  than  my  flimsy  Romaic.  As  for 
her  short,  fat,  ugly,  gay  mamma,  she  was  more  fluent  in 
Italian  and  Turkish.  There  were  also  two  younger 
daughters,  one  plumper  and  one  more  pinched,  dressed 
as  exactly  alike  as  two  magpies,  an  older  married  daughter 
with  a  diamond,  a  dumpy,  talkative  person  who  had  the 
air  of  a  poor  relation,  and  a  rakish  husband  or  two.  They 
all  seemed  to  be  as  much  at  home  in  Russian  as  they  were 
in  Greek,  and  between  the  odds  and  ends  of  other  lan- 
guages which  we  possessed  in  common  we  got  along 
famously. 

The  gay  mamma,  to  whom  I  would  have  proposed 
before  the  night  was  out  if  I  had  been  quite  sure  that 
neither  of  the  rakish  husbands  belonged  to  her,  finally 
announced  that  she  was  tired  of  doing  all  the  talking 
and  that  we  must  take  turns  telling  stories,  propounding 
enigmas,  or  otherwise  helping  to  pass  the  time.  She 

6 


CAUCASIAN  PROLOGUE 

opened  this  Decameron  with  a  Turkish  folk  tale  which 
I  had  heard  before  but  never  with  so  much  verve  and 
mimicry.  One  of  the  rakish  husbands  came  next.  He 
tried  to  get  out  of  his  turn  by  declaring  that  none  of  the 
stories  he  knew  could  be  told  in  such  company.  The 
ladies  all  cried  out  that  he  should  try  them  and  see. 
Whereupon  he  compromised  with  a  string  of  Turkish 
proverbs.  The  bride  followed,  and  she  told  a  Caucasian 
version  of  the  story  of  Cupid  and  Psyche,  about  a  fairy 
who  was  a  fairy  by  night  and  a  flower  in  the  daytime — 
to  the  infinite  despair  of  her  lover.  The  fairy  told  him, 
however,  that  if  in  the  morning  he  could  distinguish  her 
from  the  other  flowers  in  the  garden,  and  carry  her  away 
in  his  hand,  he  would  break  the  enchantment  and  she 
would^  always  be  his.  So  in  the  morning  he  went  into 
the  garden  and  he  broke  the  enchantment,  because  of  all 
the  flowers  the  one  he  picked  was  the  only  one  that  had 
no  dew  on  its  petals.  .  .  . 

In  the  meantime  my  knees  knocked  together;  for  tell- 
ing stories  is  not  my  strong  point,  and  least  of  all  in 
strange  tongues.  But  in  the  end  I  was  saved  by  the  gay 
mamma,  who  could  not  stop  talking  long  enough  for  the 
turn  to  go  the  entire  round.  She  then  proposed  that  we 
do  something  which  all  could  do  together.  She  therefore 
lifted  uft  a  far  from  disagreeable  voice  in  song,  and  the 
others  joined  in — I  wondering  what  they  would  make  of 
it  next  door  in  the  Damencoupe.  As  it  transpired,  most 
of  us  belonged  in  the  Damencoupe,  though  the  bride  had 
sung  in  her  marriage  morn  before  she  retired  thither 
with  her  younger  sisters  and  her  poor  relation.  After 
that  the  rest  of  us  arranged  ourselves  for  the  night.  To 
that  end  we  turned  up  the  backs  of  the  seats,  as  may  be 

7 


PERSIAN  MINIATURES 

done  in  a  Russian  car  even  when  it  is  not  a  sleeper,  and  one 
of  the  rakish  husbands  and  I  stretched  out  on  the  upper 
storey,  while  the  gay  mamma  and  her  married  daughter 
at  last  dropped  into  silence  below.  The  only  discomfort 
about  it  was  that  the  double  windows  were  hermetically 
sealed  for  winter. 

In  the  simplicity  of  my  heart  I  had  imagined  that  one 
travelled  most  of  the  way  from  Batum  to  Baku  in  roman- 
tic mountain  passes.  To  my  great  surprise  and  dis- 
appointment, accordingly,  I1  discovered  in  the  morning 
that  no  mountains  were  near  us.  They  had  receded 
during  the  night  to  either  side  of  a  wide  bare  brown 
valley  with  water  in  the  bottom  of  it.  They  did,  how- 
ever, draw  together  a  little  as  we  went  on,  and  towers 
decorated  the  tops  of  hills.  Sheepskin  caps,  further- 
more, began  more  thickly  to  decorate  the  roads  beside 
the  track,  where  I  also  noticed  sheets  of  ice,  and  about 
half-past  eight  we  stopped  at  Tiflis.  This  for  me  was 
doubly  an  hour  of  doom,  for  not  only  did  I  pine  to  look 
at  Tiflis  but  I  died  to  accept  the  gay  mamma's  invitation 
and  go  to  the  wedding  with  my  lively  friends.  The 
trouble  was  that  I  had  other  friends  to  meet  in  Baku, 
and  a  Caspian  boat  to  catch.  So  I  had  time  only  to  be 
introduced  to  a  smart  Greek  bridegroom,  to  eat  an  ex- 
cellent breakfast,  to  stare  all  too  briefly  at  the  as|ounding 
people  in  the  station,  and  to  admire  Tiflis  from  the  com- 
partment window  as  we  rumbled  away  from  it,  hanging 
on  either  lip  of  a  deep  gorge  with  a  cog  railway  climbing 
a  mountain  behind.  After  that  the  bare  brown  valley 
widened  again,  giving  view  of  distant  snow  mountains 
on  the  right  and  more  distant  snow  mountains  on  the 
left.  In  front  of  the  latter  ran  a  line  of  low  hills,  fluted 

8 


CAUCASIAN  PROLOGUE 

with  sharp  erosions,  that  looked  sometimes  like  mud  vol- 
canoes and  sometimes  like  an  old  shore. 

I  was  not,  I  must  confess,  too  upset  at  being  torn  from 
my  Greek  friends  to  take  notice  of  my  new  compan- 
ions. Chief  among  them  were  a  Russian  matron,  much 
more  serious  than  the  gay  mamma  whose  corner  she  took, 
and  her  big  bold  black  daughter  with  a  bang,  with  an 
eye  that  looked  as  if  it  might  have  been  drawn  by  Mr. 
Maurice  Ketten,  and  with  a  willingness  to  cultivate 
casual  masculine  acquaintance.  That  eye  filled  me  with 
mingled  emotions,  for  while  it  alarmed  me  a  little  it 
was  the  first  Russian  eye  into  which  I  had  gazed  for  more 
than  two  seconds  since  1  had  set  foot  in  the  Caucasus. 
And  for  Russian  eyes,  as  for  many  other  things  Russian, 
I  have  always  had  a  weakness.  I  hardly  know  why. 
Perhaps  because  I  went  to  school  with  some  boys  from 
Taganrog,  at  the  mouth  of  the  Don.  Perhaps  because  a 
railway  clerk  in  St.  Petersburg  once  insisted,  with  con- 
siderable asperity,  in  spite  of  my  feeble  protests,  on  giv- 
ing me  change  for  ten  pounds  out  of  a  five  pound  note, 
to  the  no  small  advantage  of  my  depleted  exchequer. 
Perhaps  because  an  old  lady  who  might  have  taught  me 
far  more  than  she  did  set  me  reading  Tolstoy  and 
Turgeniev  long  before  1  knew  anything  about  Hardy 
and  Meredith,  or  Howells  and  James,  or  even  Jack 
London  and  Richard  Harding  Davis.  With  the  unhappy 
result  that  when  in  time  I  came  to  the  latter,  and 
particularly  the  last  two,  I  failed  to  derive  quite  the 
satisfaction  I  might  have  felt  if  I  had  happened  on  them 
first. 

These  things,  of  course,  are  largely  a  matter  of  the 
personal  equation,  and  the  world  is  luckily  big  enough 


PERSIAN  MINIATURES 

for  Tolstoy  and  Richard  Harding  Davis  to  sit  on  the  same 
shelf.  I  find,  though,  that- on  my  shelf  the  Russians  have 
a  curious,  if  a  perfectly  unconscious,  way  of  putting  out 
everybody  else's  eye.  They  are  so  human.  They  are 
so  simple.  They  see  around  so  many  corners.  Nothing 
frightens  them;  but  they  are  not  prudish  about  it,  as  an 
Anglo-Saxon  has  a  tendency  to  be,  or  cynical  about  it,  as  a 
Latin  has  a  tendency  to  be.  Neither  are  they  senti- 
mental about  it.  And  behind  it  all  there  is  a  strange 
trouble,  which  somehow  contrives  not  to  be  childish  even 
in  the  face  of  an  American  Glad  Book.  Dostoievsky 
rather  puts  his  finger  on  it,  in  "The  Brothers  Karama- 
zov":  "  It  is  different  for  other  people;  but  we  in  our  green 
youth  have  to  settle  the  eternal  questions  first  of  all. 
That's  what  we  care  about.  Young  Russia  is  talking 
about  nothing  but  the  eternal  questions  now."  And 
the  things  that  come  into  their  heads !  Do  you  remember 
Svidrigailov,  in  "Crime  and  Punishment"? 

"'I  don't  believe  in  a  future  life/  said  Raskolnikov. 

"Svidrigailov  sat  lost  in  thought. 

"And  what  if  there  are  only  spiders  there,  or  something 
like  that?'  he  said  suddenly. 

"'He  is  a  madman/  thought  Raskolnikov/' 

And  so,  perhaps,  do  you.  But  only  a  Russian  would 
think  of  that.  And  only  a  Russian  could  have  written 
that  tremendous  scene  between  Svidrigailov  and  Sonia, 
surely  the  most  shaking  of  its  kind  in  all  literature,  when 
he  gets  her  into  that  garret  and  then  lets  her  go. 

I  regarded  the  bold  black  eye  of  the  young  lady  with  a 
bang  and  asked  myself,  with  some  misgiving,  if  it  were 
seeking  the  solution  of  eternal  questions.  I  went  into 
the  corridor  to  think  about  it.  There  1  found  myself 

10 


CAUCASIAN  PROLOGUE 

beside  another  lady,  much  older,  who  presently  asked 
me  something  in  Russian.  She  looked  so  much  like  an 
English  or  New  English  woman  of  the  kind  I  most  like 
that  I  didn't  answer,  as  I  often  do  under  such  circum- 
stances, that  I  hadn't  a  match  and  didn't  know  what 
time  it  was.  I  told  her  instead  that  I  didn't  know  Rus- 
sian. And  before  I  knew  it  she  was  telling  me  that  she 
was  going  to  Petersburg  for  the  winter  but  that  she  lived 
in  Batum,  or  just  outside  of  it,  where  she  had  a  house  and 
a  garden  in  sight  of  the  Black  Sea.  In  her  hand  she  held 
some  violets  from  that  garden  and  she  offered  me  a  few 
of  them,  telling  me  how  quickly  everything  grew  there, 
even  subtropical  things,  under  the  high  white  wall  of 
the  Caucasus.  Anarchists,  she  said,  preach  the  destruc- 
tion of  property;  but  it  is  an  instinct  of  man  to  have 
something  of  his  own.  When  one  is  young  one  can 
travel,  and  be  alone.  Later  one  wishes  a  home,  and  a 
garden.  Her  garden  she  had  planted  herself,  from  the 
beginning.  It  was  like  her  child,  now  that  her  chil- 
dren were  grown  up.  She  and  her  husband  had  done  every- 
thing by  degrees,  as  they  could  save  money  from  their 
pay.  Her  husband  was  a  retired  civil  servant  of  some 
kind.  She  didn't  go  into  particulars  and  I  didn't  ask 
for  them:  but  she  told  me  that  they  had  lived  in  many 
parts  of  Russia,  adding  that  she  had  been  very  fortunate. 
She  had  married  young  a  young  and  handsome  husband, 
with  whom  she  had  always  been  happy.  Her  children, 
too,  had  never  caused  them  any  unhappiness — except  one 
daughter,  who  died  in  the  flower  of  her  age.  At  first, 
she  said,  she  took  it  for.  granted.  Later,  however,  when 
she  saw  how  many  marriages  of  her  friends  were  unhappy, 
she  discovered  how  fortunate  she  had  been.  Her  chil- 


PERSIAN  MINIATURES 

dren,  of  course,  she  missed,  now  that  they  were  married 
and  living  in  homes  of  their  own.  But  there  had  been 
among  them  none  of  the  disasters  of  which  one  was  con- 
stantly hearing.  And  there  was  her  garden.  .  . 

She  said  it  all  quite  simply,  without  polite  prelimi- 
naries, just  as  if  she  had  walked  out  of  Turgeniev.  And 
she  said  many  other  things  which  I  have  often  thought 
of  since.  "My  country  makes  me  sad,"  she  said — "so 
large,  so  varied,  and  he  who  should  govern  not  strong 
enough,  and  those  who  do  govern  thinking  only  of  their 
pockets.  There  is  too  much  unhappiness.  There  will  be 
another  uprising."  That  was  in  November,  1913.  "  Peo- 
ple cannot  speak  or  think.  Those  who  do,  have  to  leave 
the  country.  Tolstoy  was  the  only  one  who  stayed,  and 
whom  they  dared  not  touch."  The  mention  of  that  name 
brought  up  other  names.  I  told  her  that  I  had  been  in 
New  York  when  Gorky  went  there — in  1905,  was  it— 
and  that  I  had  not  been  proud  of  the  zeal  which  my 
fellow  countrymen  showed  in  casting  the  first  stone  at 
him.  To  my  surprise  she  rather  took  their  part  against 
me,  although  she  considered  Gorky  the  greatest  of  living 
Russian  writers.  She  surprised  me,  too,  by  saying  that 
he  had  deprecated  the  reading  of  Dostoievsky  by  the 
younger  generation — though  perhaps  I  misunderstood 
her.  Of  Artsibashev's  "Sanin"  she  cried  out  that  it  was 
a  dreadful  book.  She  told  me  I  should  rather  read 
Korolenko,  and  the  plays  of  Ostrovsky.  When  I  told  her 
what  an  impression  "Evgeni  Onegin"  made  upon  me, 
years  ago,  in  Moscow,  and  what  new  things  had  been 
revealed  to  me  when  Safonov  came  to  New  York  to 
conduct  the  Philharmonic  Orchestra,  she  was  evidently 
pleased.  "Yes,"  she  said;  "I  love  Chopin,  Schumann, 

12 


CAUCASIAN  PROLOGUE 

Beethoven.     But  our  Russians  have  something  they  have 
not — a  sadness,  an  understanding." 

All  this  time  we  had  been  standing  up  in  the  corridor. 
My  old  lady  out  of  Turgeniev  finally  invited  me  to  sit 
down  in  her  compartment — which  happened  to  be  the 
Damencoupe.  And  there  I  walked  into  Dostoievsky. 
For  the  back  of  one  of  the  seats  was  turned  up,  and  on 
that  upper  shelf  another  lady  was  lying,  of  whom  I  hesi- 
tatingly asked  if  I  did  not  disturb  her.  She  had  a  strange 
thin  face  and  a  quantity  of  pale  hair  piled  loosely  on  top 
of  her  head.  "Monsieur  does  not  disturb  me,"  she  re- 
plied. "He  is  a  stranger,  and  therefore  not  a  bore — yet. 
Afterwards  we  shall  see!"  She  said  it  in  a  deep,  hoarse 
voice,  and  in  a  French  much  more  fluent  than  the  old 
lady's  or  mine,  but  with  an  extraordinary  accent.  At 
first  she  only  listened  to  the  two  of  us  who  sat  below, 
supplying  every  now  and  then  the  word  we  groped  for. 
Then  she  began  to  talk,  too,  asking  me  what  I  was  up  to 
and  telling  me  about  the  barbarous  Caucasus,  the  mag- 
nificent scenery,  the  pass  from  Tiflis  to  Vladikavkaz.  She 
was  from  Tiflis  herself.  "  I  would  have  liked  to  travel, 
too,"  she  remarked.  "But  now — it  is  finished.  I  go 
to  Petersburg,  to  die."  She  said  it  without  heroics, 
without  sentimentality,  in  her  deep,  hoarse  voice,  her  ter- 
rific accent,  stroking  her  pale  hair  on  her  upper  shelf. 
And  she  and  the  older  lady  presently  fell  afoul  of  each 
other  over  the  Russian  peasant.  The  lady  from  Tiflis 
insisted  that  he  was  lazy,  stupid,  drunken,  the  curse  and 
despair  of  the  country.  The  lady  from  Batum  took  up 
his  defence,  saying  that  she  had  spent  all  her  life  with 
the  muzhik  and  thought  the  world  of  him.  If  he  was 
drunken  it  was  largely  the  fault  of  the  Government,  who 

13 


PERSIAN  MINIATURES 

forced  vodka  upon  villages  even  when  they  didn't  want 
it,  for  the  sake  of  the  revenue.  Ignorant  he  certainly 
was,  that  muzhik;  but  what  chance  had  he  had?  And 
she  went  on  to  tell  with  what  difficulty  she  had  obtained 
permission  from  Petersburg  to  open  a  night  school  for 
peasants  in  one  of  the  cities  of  Little  Russia  where  her 
husband  was  then  stationed.  More  peasants  had  come 
than  there  was  room  for,  and  soldiers,  too — till  her  hus- 
band was  suddenly  transferred  to  another  province. 
For  the  rest,  the  muzhik  merely  followed  the  example 
set  him  by  his  betters,  in  this  generation  without  restraint, 
without  faith,  without  God.  As  for  her,  she  cared  noth- 
ing for  pictures  and  confessions,  she  said:  only  the  Gos- 
pel, and  to  hold  something  sacred.  .  .  The  lady 
from  Tiflis  listened  from  her  upper  shelf,  her  eyes  strangely 
intense  in  her  thin  face.  "Yes,"  she  finally  uttered  in 

that  hoarse  voice:  "To  hold  something  sacred "    And 

she  turned  her  face  to  the  wall. 

It  suddenly  came  over  me  in  the  silence  that  followed, 
as  I  stared  at  that  pile  of  pale  hair,  that  there  was  some- 
thing more  terrific  than  an  accent  on  that  upper  shelf. 
Yet  the  eyes  that  looked  at  the  wall  were  not  terrified. 
And  who  knew  what  they  saw?  They  saw,  at  any  rate, 
that  the  stranger  was  after  all  a  bore.  So  I  went  back, 
awkwardly  enough,  to  my  own  compartment.  The 
matron  and  her  big  black  daughter  were  still  there.  They 
at  once  made  it  known  to  me  that  they  were  not  seeking 
the  solution  of  eternal  questions,  and  I  found,  after  my 
visit  in  the  Damencoupe,  that  I  would  not  lay  it  up  against 
them.  The  only  thing  I  laid  up  against  them  was  that 
they  looked  a  little  too  arch  over  my  violets,  and  asked 
me  whether  the  lady  from  Batum  were  a  governess  or  a 


CAUCASIAN  PROLOGUE 

school  teacher.  They  had  evidently  been  listening.  I 
assured  them  that  the  lady  from  Batum  was,  on  the 
contrary,  the  wife  of  a  Governor  General.  It  may  not 
have  been  true,  but  it  impressed  them  considerably. 
As  for  them,  they  were  the  wife  and  daughter  of  a  Colonel, 
now  stationed  at  Vladikavkaz.  Was  I  going  to  Vladi- 
kavkaz? In  the  summer  it  was  delicious,  when  the  beau 
monde  of  Tiflis  and  Moscow  and  Petersburg  came  to  the 
resorts  on  the  north  side  of  the  mountain.  In  the  winter, 
however,  it  was  a  little  sad.  Then  the  daughter  began 
to  prepare  me  for  Vladikavkaz  by  giving  me  a  Russian 
lesson,  giggling  in  spite  of  herself  at  my  dreadful  pronun- 
ciation. But  presently  a  tall  lieutenant  made  his  ap- 
pearance, and  the  Russian  lesson  came  to  an  abrupt  end. 
I  did  not  mind,  for  I  caught  sight  through  the  window 
of  a  rose-coloured  lake.  By  this  time  we  had  come  much 
nearer  the  mountains  of  Prometheus,  whose  white  heights 
wore  a  delicate  flush.  Far  away  on  the  other  side  a  row 
of  silver  peaks  ran  sharp  against  a  painted  sky.  Were 
they  Persian  peaks,  I  wondered?  If  they  were,  the  sight 
of  them  gave  me  no  such  thrill  as  should  be  felt  by  the 
right-minded  pilgrim  when  first  he  beholds  the  distant 
goal  of  his  desire.  Even  the  summits  of  Prometheus, 
whose  flush  paled  imperceptibly  and  took  on  a  phos- 
phorescent glimmer,  failed  to  do  what  they  should  for  a 
man  who  had  sat  in  the  theatre  of  Dionysus.  Instead 
of  thinking  about  the  Greek  Titan  and  his  rock  and  his 
vulture,  I  found  myself  thinking  about  the  Russian  lady 
from  Tiflis,  lying  on  her  upper  shelf  in  the  Damencoupe 
with  her  wide-open  eyes  to  the  wall.  Also,  I  grew  rather 
sleepy.  The  train  rumbled  on.  The  country  outside 
turned  dimmer,  flatter,  fantastically  blanched.  Could 

15 


PERSIAN  MINIATURES 

that  be  sand?  Like  enough.  For  all  of  a  sudden  I  caught, 
through  the  corridor  window,  the  glint  of  wide  water 
under  a  climbing  moon.  The  Caspian  Sea!  I  did  the 
Caspian  Sea  the  honour  to  wake  up  and  go  into  the  corri- 
dor. I  then  discovered  to  my  astonishment  that  the 
Caspian  Sea,  for  all  its  moon  of  Turkestan,  looked  exactly 
like  Lake  Champlain  under  the  moon  of  Vermont — until  I 
spied  on  the  shore  a  vagrant  camel,  the  silhouette  of  him 
dark  and  exotic  as  the  East  against  a  rippling  glamour.  He 
saved  the  day  for  the  Caspian,  did  that  camel!  Then 
ruddier  and  more  melodramatic  fires  began  to  flare  on 
the  horizon,  to  the  north.  And  at  last,  latish  in  the 
evening,  I  said  good-bye  to  my  Russian  friends  and  got 
off  at  Baku. 

Those  fires  and  that  camel  are  the  symbols  and  epi- 
tome of  Baku.  Baku  is,  if  you  like,  a  jumping-off  place. 
It  is,  at  any  rate,  the  place  from  which  you  jump  off  to 
Tehran  or  Samarkand.  But  it  had  to  me  an  almost 
American  air — as  it  were  a  Pittsburgh  dipped  in  Asia. 
That  is  perhaps  because  Baku  flames  and  belches,  too,  if 
after  a  manner  of  its  own,  and  without  the  diabolic 
beauty  with  which  nature  and  man  have  conspired  to 
endow  the  true  Pittsburgh.  Baku  sits  on  lower  and  more 
barren  hills,  regarding  a  greasy  gray-green  sea  that  never 
again  looked  to  me  so  picturesque  as  when  I  first  beheld 
it  in  the  moonlight  behind  a  camel.  The  houses  of  Baku, 
furthermore,  make  no  attempt  to  scrape  the  sky,  al- 
though they  look  solider  than  those  of  Pittsburgh.  They 
are  astonishingly  new,  however,  a  great  many  of  them. 
And  Baku  bustles  in  a  way  that  is  quite  upsetting  to 
one's  theories  of  that  part  of  the  world.  What  gives  this 
process  its  particular  colour  is  that  Baku  is,  as  a  matter 

16 


CAUCASIAN  PROLOGUE 

of  fact,  a  fairly  venerable  town.  Some  twenty  years 
before  America  was  discovered  a  Venetian  ambassador 
by  the  name  of  Giosafat  Barbaro  passed  that  way  and 
wrote,  or  his  quaint  English  translator  did,  of  "a  citie 
called  Bachu,  whereof  the  sea  of  Bachu  taketh  its  name, 
neere  vnto  which  citie  there  is  a  mountaigne  that  casteth 
foorth  blacke  oyle,  stynkeng  horryblye,  twhich  they, 
nevertheles,  vse  for  furnissheng  of  their  lightes,  and 
for  the  anoynteng  of  their  camells  twies  a  yere."  And 
all  honest  tourists,  of  whom  I  regret  to  confess  I  am  not 
one,  piously  visit  in  Baku  a  place  where  the  fires  of  Zoro- 
aster have  burned  these  two  or  three  thousand  years. 

The  remnants  of  this  more  ancient  Baku  are  to  be  seen 
in  certain  higher  parts  of  the  town,  where  a  castle  stands 
in  light  stone,  rather  like  the  tufa  of  Naples,  adorned 
with  Persian  lions  and  inscriptions.  Beyond  it  stretches 
a  quarter  which  went  far  toward  consoling  me  for  the 
discovery  that  I  might  after  all  have  stopped  of?  in  Tiflis, 
inhabited  as  it  is  by  fragments  of  more  strange  races 
than  I  know  anything  about.  The  races  of  Pittsburgh 
are  no  doubt  as  varied,  but  they  all  dress  and  look  more 
or  less  alike,  whereas  in  Baku  many  thousands  of 
good  people  still  dress  as  their  ancestors  did  before 
America  was  discovered.  As  I  sat  one  evening  in  my 
French  Hotel  d' Europe,  eating  a  Russian  dinner,  I  over- 
heard a  group  of  English  engineers  discussing  the  merits 
of  oysters.  They  warmed  my  patriotic  heart  not  a  little 
by  the  favour  with  which  they  mentioned  Blue  Points 
and  Lynn  Havens,  though  they  ended  by  giving  the  palm 
to  a  certain  unpronounceable  mollusc  of  Rio  de  Janeiro. 
Later  I  came  to  know  one  of  those  engineers  very  well, 
and  he  told  me  that  in  spite  of  Giosafat  Barbaro  and 

17 


PERSIAN  MINIATURES 

the  Zoroastrians,  Baku  did  not  begin  to  bustle  until 
about  thirty  years  ago.  Then  it  was  a  ruinous  village 
of  Tartars  and  Persians,  together  with  other  ingredients 
of  the  usual  Caucasian  pie.  One  day  a  Russian  officer 
took  it  into  his  head  to  buy  some  land  there  for  a  farm. 
Having  bought  his  farm,  he  presently  found  out  that 
nothing  would  grow  on  it.  Wherever  he  ploughed,  more- 
over, a  disgusting  black  liquid  would  ooze  out  of  the 
earth,  and  nothing  could  drain  it  away.  Of  these  mat- 
ters he  made  bitter  complaint  to  an  Armenian,  offering 
him  the  farm  for  an  extremely  small  sum.  The  Ar- 
menian kindly  consented  to  take  the  place  off  his  hands, 
having  a  suspicion  that  that  black  liquid  would  bear 
looking  into.  That  suspicion  made  the  Armenian  a  mil- 
lionaire. The  Tartars  and  Persians  who  owned  most  of 
the  rest  of  Baku  had  suspicions  of  another  kind  when 
other  people  tried  to  buy  their  land,  and  for  a  long  time 
they  wouldn't  sell.  In  the  end,  however,  they  became 
millionaires,  too.  They  couldn't  help  themselves.  And 
that  is  why  Baku  is  so  amusing.  The  Russian  and  Ar- 
menian millionaires  go  away,  like  the  millionaires  of 
Pittsburgh.  The  Tartar  and  the  Persian  millionaires 
don't,  having  no  idea  what  on  earth  to  do  with  their 
money.  So  they  roll  around  Baku  in  such  automobiles 
as  these  mortal  eyes  have  ne'er  beheld,  painted  the  most 
recondite  colours,  gilded,  jewelled,  bearing  passengers 
with  sleepy  or  with  boiling  black  eyes  as  the  case  may  be, 
with  all  the  noses  of  Asia,  with  beards  that  as  often  as  not 
are  dyed  scarlet  with  henna,  with  such  headdresses  as 
never  were  seen  on  sea  or  land.  They  also  go  to  the 
movies,  marvelling  over  the  manners  and  morals  of 
Europe  and  the  New  World  as  exhibited  to  them  in  the 

18 


CAUCASIAN   PROLOGUE 

films  of  Pathe  and  Charlie  Chaplin.  And  for  them  are 
the  shops  of  Baku  stuffed  with  every  gimcrack  that  the 
heart  of  man  can  desire — provided  he  wants  to  pay  for  it 
ten  times  as  much  as  he  would  in  Pittsburgh. 

It  was  the  middle  of  November  when  I  arrived  in  Baku, 
but  it  was  still  warm  enough  for  the  band  to  play  in  the 
park.  That  park  is  the  quintessence  of  Baku.  It  is 
not  a  very  leafy  park,  even  in  midsummer,  for  nothing 
will  grow  in  it  except  in  tubs  of  earth  imported  at  vast 
expense.  Neither  is  there  anything  wherewith  to  water 
those  tubs  except  by  distilling,  again  at  vast  expense,  the 
greasy  gray-green  mixture  of  salt  and  oil  that  fills  the 
shallow  basin  of  the  Caspian  Sea.  Nevertheless,  it  is  a 
very  agreeable  park,  laid  out  at  length  on  the  edge  of 
the  water.  There  are  trim  sanded  paths,  there  are  showy 
casinoes,  there  are  boat-houses  and  bathing-houses,  there 
are  above  all  Russian  caps  set  on  more  kinds  of  heads 
than  I  can  begin  to  catalogue.  There  are  also  hats,  and 
turbans,  and  woolly  kalpaks,  together  with  coats  of  many 
colours,  and  rows  of  cartridge  cases,  and  wonderful  dag- 
gers, and  more  wonderful  ladies,  attached  or  otherwise, 
and  heaven  knows  what.  And  as  they  move  to  and  fro 
on  the  trim  sanded  paths,  or  lounge  on  the  wooden  benches., 
a  band  better  than  ever  I  heard  in  New  York  plays  Verdi 
and  Wagner  and  Bizet  and  Glinka  and  Chaikovsky. 
And  at  last,  there  on  the  edge  of  nowhere,  the  electric 
lights  come  out  with  a  pop,  and  far  away,  over  the  dark 
Caspian,  a  slow  moon  climbs  out  of  Samarkand. 


19 


II 

ANABASIS 

We  are  the  Pilgrims,  master;  we  shall  go 

Always  a  little  further:  it  may  be 

Beyond  that  last  blue  mountain  barred  witb  snow, 

Across  that  angry  or  that  glimmering  sea.     .     .     . 

J.  E.  Flecker:  THE  GOLDEN  JOURNEY  TO  SAMARKAND 


FROM  the  deck  of  the  unsteady  little  paddle- 
wheel  steamer  that  churned   out   of   the   bay 
toward  a  low  red  moon  we  looked  our  last  on 
Baku — a  receding  crescent  of  lights  accented 
at  one  end  by  a  dark  hill  and  at  the  other  by  the  angry 
glare  of  the  oil  fields.     Then  we  went  down  to  a  porten- 
tous Russian  dinner.     At  the  head  of  the  table  sat  a  grave 
Lettish  captain  who  at  once  made  me  conscious  of  all  I 

20 


ANABASIS 

had  missed  by  never  embarking  on  the  Caspian  before. 
Beside  him  sat  the  tall  Swede  who  on  the  Black  Sea  had 
formed  such  a  predilection  for  my  steamer  chair,  and 
who  now  looked  at  me  through  his  monocle  with  immense 
disdain.  It  appeared  that  he  was  going  to  Persia  to  be 
an  officer  of  gendarmes.  Opposite  him  sat  a  Belgian 
customs  inspector  and  his  family,  also  bound  to  the  same 
country  for  the  first  time.  Then  there  were  two  hand- 
some Russian  officers,  two  frock-coated  Persian  Khans 
with  black  pill  boxes  on  their  heads,  and  our  three 
selves,  who  came  from  yet  more  distant  portions  of 
the  earth.  It  was  polyglot,  it  was  pleasant,  and  after 
dinner  Madame  T  Inspect  rice  sang  us  some  charming 
French  songs.  I  shall  not  try  to  pretend  that  I  was 
too  world-weary  to  be  taken  in  by  it  all.  As  a  matter 
of  fact,  I  was  delighted.  But  I  was  also  able  to  perceive 
that  we  might  just  as  well  have  been  on  the  Black  Sea  or 
the  Baltic. 

The  next  morning,  however,  the  Caspian  really  looked 
as  the  Caspian  might  be  expected  to  look.  It  was  the 
same  greasy  greeny  gray,  and  birds  that  should  fly 
over  no  true  sea  fluttered  about  the  chopping  side-wheeler 
or  even  lighted  on  it,  playing  hide  and  seek  with  belted 
Russian  soldiers  who  tried  to  catch  them  in  their  hands. 
We  passed  a  full-rigged  ship,  too,  stubby  and  black,  with 
a  square  counter  that  came  out  of  no  yard  of  born  ship- 
wrights. It  was  such  a  ship  as  Master  Anthony  Jenkin- 
son  might  have  set  sail  in  from  the  mouth  of  the  Volga  up- 
on the  disastrous  affairs  of  the  Muscovy  Company.  Then, 
about  noon,  the  bank  of  gray  in  the  south  began  to  resolve 
itself  into  a  rampart  of  cloud  that  grew  taller  and  solider 
as  we  chugged  toward  it.  And  at  last  a  semicircle  of  trees 

21 


PERSIAN  MINIATURES 

pricked  the  edge  of  the  sea,  making  the  rampart  behind 
it  higher  and  more  tenebrous  than  ever. 

"What  is  that?"  cried  the  Belgian  lady  of  the  captain, 
who  paced  back  and  forth  near  us,  grave  as  ever  and  a 
little  grim. 

"  It  is  Persia/'  he  answered — like  that,  as  if  Persia  were 
an  every-day  affair. 

"And  when  shall  we  smell  the  roses,  and  hear  the  night- 
ingales?" pursued  his  pretty  passenger. 

The  captain  waited  a  discreet  moment  before  answering 
cryptically: 

"Madame  perhaps  forgets  that  it  is  November.  We 
shall  arrive  in  an  hour  or  two." 

He  pursued  his  walk,  leaving  me  to  consider  the  grim 
case  of  the  Belgian  lady.  Of  Persia  I  knew  no  more 
than  she,  but  of  certain  regions  contiguous  thereto  I 
knew  a  little,  and  I  trembled  for  her.  What  I  really 
found  myself  considering,  however,  was  that  rampart  of 
growing  grimness  that  towered  across  the  south,  unbe- 
lievably high,  increasingly  seamed  and  patched  with 
shadows  of  green  and  white.  Such  a  coast  as  that, 
at  any  rate,  I  had  never  seen  in  my  life.  The  prickly 
trees  on  the  horizon  grew  taller  and  darker,  they  some- 
how established  a  connection  with  the  stupendous  moun- 
tain chain  behind  them,  and  at  last  we  slid  between 
two  long  wooden  breakwaters  into  the  still  lagoon  of 
Enzeli. 

At  sight  of  it  that  unhappy  Belgian  lady  burst  into  tears. 
I  knew  much  better  than  if  she  had  told  me  that  she  had 
seen  precious  things  in  museums,  that  she  had  read  an 
expurgated  edition  of  the  "Arabian  Nights,"  and  that  she 
expected  palaces  of  porcelain  set  among  roses  and  night- 

22 


ANABASIS 

ingales,  with  no  doubt  a  palm  or  two  in  the  background, 
a  camel  in  the  foreground,  and  who  knew  what  else? 
Perhaps  an  elephant,  or  an  ibis  standing  on  one  leg  in  a 
pool  of  lotuses.  It  may  be  that  if  I  had  been  booked 
to  live  in  Enzeli,  like  Madame  1'Inspectrice,  I  might  have 
burst  into  tears,  too.  As  it  was  I  found  the  lagoon  of 
Enzeli  a  highly  pleasing  place,  with  its  gray  sheen  framed 
in  trees  with  its  quaint,  unpainted  row-boats  turned 
up  at  either  end;  with  its  junk-like  ships  moored  along  the 
low  shore,  and  its  encircling  houses  of  weathered  wood, 
rather  scattered,  of  which  the  most  pleasing  had  steep 
thatched  roofs. 

Leaving  the  larger  town  of  Enzeli  at  the  right,  we  sidled 
up  to  the  opposite  edge  of  Kazian.  There  we  were  im- 
mediately boarded  by  a  swarm  of  bare-legged  ruffians 
who  chattered,  to  my  immense  astonishment,  in  a  lan- 
guage perfectly  unintelligible  to  me.  They  drawled  or 
whined,  rather,  in  a  way  that  reminded  one  a  little  of 
Naples;  but  there  was  nothing  else  familiar  about  them 
except  the  leather  humps  on  their  backs,  whereon  they  pro- 
ceeded to  balance  our  trunks.  Some  of  them  looked  as  if 
they  might  be  kin  to  the  Tartar  porters  of  Baku.  The 
flapping  clothes  of  these  had  once  been  white,  and  they 
wore  dusky  skull  caps  of  the  same  material.  Others 
covered  their  hair  with  a  kind  of  sheepskin  muff,  sewed 
up  at  one  end.  But  the  rags  of  most  of  them  were  dull 
blue  or  green  or  russet,  girdled  at  the  waist  and  skirted 
to  the  knee,  and  they  contrived  to  keep  on  their  heads 
an  astounding  erection  of  black  or  brown  felt,  shaped 
rather  like  a  boiled  auk's  egg  with  the  small  end  chipped 
off. 

These  picturesque  individuals  piloted  us  and  our  lug- 

23 


PERSIAN  MINIATURES 

gage  to  a  big  archway  opening  into  an  interior  court  of 
the  custom  house.  True,  we  had  inadvertently  thrown 
our  checks  overboard ;  but  on  the  Caspian  what  is  a  little 
matter  of  receipts,  between  friends?  In  that  archway 
our  passports  were  duly  examined  by  a  superb  personage 
in  a  long  coat  and  a  black  pillbox  adorned  with  the  lion 
and  sun  of  his  country  in  brass.  If  he  had  followed  the 
dictates  of  his  own  dark  heart  he  would  doubtless  have 
looked  into  our  trunks;  for  I  could  see  he  was  dying  to 
know  what  on  earth  we  had  in  so  many  bags,  boxes, 
bundles,  and  other  receptacles  beginning  with  b  and  other 
letters.  But  since  we  were  the  travelling  companions 
of  a  Belgian  customs  inspector,  and  since  my  friends  were 
well  known  to  his  own  Belgian  chief,  we  were  passed 
through  with  no  more  than  an  interval  for  me  to  admire 
the  passengers  who  sauntered  off  the  Russian  boat  with 
gay  saddlebags  and  painted  wooden  trunks.  There  were 
also  two  distinguished  looking  English  ladies  whom  I  had 
not  seen  on  board.  One  of  them  sat  like  a  symbol  of 
her  empire  on  a  stout  metal  box  so  appropriately  labelled, 
in  big  white  letters,  IRONSIDES,  that  I  very  nearly 
smiled  at  her  like  a  bounder.  Then  we  climbed  a  flight 
of  stairs  to  thank  the  Belgian  customs  inspector  for  his 
courtesy.  We  found  him  in  a  cosy  salon  full  of  rugs  and 
Persian  bric-a-brac  and  talk  about  aniline  dyes  and  the 
export  duty  charged  on  carpets  containing  them.  This 
gentleman  also  had  a  pretty  French-speaking  wife,  upon 
whose  sympathetic  shoulder  our  own  Belgian  lady 
was  drying  the  tears  of  her  disillusionment.  And  so, 
separating  ourselves  from  all  but  our  lightest  luggage,  we 
hopped  into  a  funny  little  victoria  and  drove  away  to 
Resht. 

24 


ANABASIS 

ii 

Resht  is  an  example  of  the  unwillingness  of  the  East  to 
change  its  habits.  Resht  is  an  important  city,  capital 
of  the  rich  seaboard  province  of  Gilan.  Yet  because  the 
sea  has  never  meant  anything  to  a  Persian,  and  because 
the  caravan  roads  naturally  take  the  inner  side  of  the 
lagoon,  Resht  grew  up  out  of  sight  of  the  Caspian.  In 
the  good  old  times  those  who  insisted  on  doing  so  took 
ship  to  Enzeli,  just  as  you  do  now.  But  at  Enzeli  they 
embarked  in  one  of  those  turned-up  boats,  sailed  across 
the  lagoon,  and  rowed  or  got  themselves  towed  up  a 
river  to  within  a  mile  or  two  of  Resht,  where — after  pay- 
ing all  the  gold  of  Ophir  to  get  themselves  transported  into 
the  town  itself — they  really  began  their  journey  inland. 
Now  you  still  begin  your  real  journey  at  Resht.  In  the 
meantime,  however,  the  Russians  have  built  a  macadam- 
ised road  around  the  lagoon. 

Beside  it  ran  a  pair  of  Decauville  rails,  which  at  that 
time  shared  with  a  short  line  running  between  Tehran 
and  one  of  its  suburbs  the  honour  of  being  the  only  rail- 
road in  Persia.  And  Persia  is  bigger  than  Alaska,  about 
as  big  as  California,  Nevada,  New  Mexico,  and  Texas 
put  together — or  France,  Germany,  Austria,  and  Italy. 
But  for  my  own  part  I  was  enchanted  to  be  in  a  car- 
riage rather  than  in  a  compartment.  That  Decauville 
track,  moreover,  and  one  or  two  auto-busses  that 
whizzed  past  us,  interested  me  infinitely  less  than  the  flat 
country  through  which  we  drove  at  the  end  of  a  mild 
gray  afternoon.  It  grew  woodier  as  we  left  the  sand 
dunes  and  the  Caspian  behind  us.  A  cormorant  or  two 
flapped  away  across  marshes  of  plumy  reeds.  Crows 

25 


PERSIAN  MINIATURES 

flew  up  from  bare  rice  fields  crisscrossed  by  causeways  of 
earth.  Still  streams  wound  away  among  poplar  trees 
that  had  not  yet  lost  their  last  leaf.  Under  them  thatched 
wooden  shanties  stood  on  stilts.  And  we  passed  any 
number  of  woolly  little  black  cows  with  humps  on  their 
shoulders,  just  as  you  see  in  pictures  of  India.  Those 
cows  gave  me  only  the  first  of  many  subsequent  hints 
that  if  Persia  reaches  out  one  hand  to  Turkey,  she  stretches 
the  other  toward  that  land  so  much  older  and  more  re- 
mote. 

On  the  farther  side  of  a  wooden  bridge,  under  which  a 
turned-up  boat  paddled  off  between  reeds  and  rice  fields, 
our  driver  proceeded  to  initiate  me  into  the  most  deep- 
rooted  of  the  customs  of  Persia  by  stopping  at  a  half-way 
tea  house.  Picture  not  to  yourself,  however,  any  lady- 
like establishment  of  linen-covered  tables,  trim  waitresses, 
and  Dresden  china.  This  was  a  thatched  house  on 
stilts,  like  the  others  along  the  road,  open  in  front  to  the 
world  and  presenting  to  our  admiration  a  row  of  legs  more 
often  bare  than  not,  a  line  of  auks'  eggs — one  or  two 
with  a  neat  round  indentation  in  the  top — and  a  suc- 
cession of  long  black  pipes,  together  with  splashes  of 
russet,  green,  and  blue,  a  casual  glitter  of  brass,  and  a 
quantity  of  what,  might  have  been  whiskey  glasses,  con- 
taining about  three  fingers  each  of  nothing  stronger  than 
tea.  They  also  contained  plenty  of  sugar,  as  I  presently 
had  occasion  to  find  out,  and  perhaps  a  sliver  of  lemon. 

But  milk Heavens,  no!    The  Sahib — or  the  Sah'b, 

as  the  coachman  and  everybody  else  in  Persia  seemed  to 
call  the  head  of  our  small  party — told  me  that  those 
black  pipes  were  more  than  likely  to  contain  opium. 
And  he  went  on  to  narrate  enlivening  tales  of  what  some- 

26 


ANABASIS 

times  happens  to  carriages  in  Persia  when  their  drivers 
smoke  too  long  at  a  tea  house. 

Our  driver  happily  did  not,  and  at  nightfall  we  drew  up 
in  front  of  the  cbapar  kbaneb,  the  post-house,  of  Resht. 
Upon  this  post-house,  its  immense  eaves,  its  balconies 
hanging  on  nothing,  and  its  archway  leading  into  a  dark 
inner  court,  I  gazed  with  an  intense,  a  pathetic,  interest — 
such  is  the  power  upon  certain  innocent  spirits  of  things 
seen  for  the  first  time.  I  had,  indeed,  seen  a  post-house 
before,  but  never  one  that  had  the  dignity  of  a  national 
institution  or  of  a  lineage  that  stretched  back  unbroken 
to  the  time  of  Achaemenian  kings.  The  Sah'b  in  the 
meantime  engaged  himself  in  a  long  and  somewhat 
heated  colloquy  with  the  naib,  the  deputy  road  master  to  be 
found  in  every  post-house.  During  this  unintelligible 
conversation  there  continually  popped  up  the  esoteric 
word  asp.  Now  an  asp  never  reminds  me  of  anything 
but  Cleopatra  and  her  monument,  to  say  nothing  of  her 
woman  Charmian;  and  what  on  earth  had  those  good 
Egyptians  to  do  with  a  journey  into  Persia?  It  ap- 
peared that  they  had  a  good  deal ;  for  an  asp,  pronounced 
almost  exactly  as  in  English,  is  in  Persian  a  horse. 
Moreover,  the  naib  swore  he  could  give  us  none 
till  he  had  sent  the  Russian  mail  on  to  Tehran.  And 
it  was  very  heavy  to-night.  Apparently,  therefore, 
there  was  nothing  for  us  to  do  but  to  climb  the  open 
wooden  stair  leading  from  the  court  to  the  upper  gallery 
of  the  cbapar  kbaneb,  to  enter  a  room  furnished  with  two 
beds,  a  long  table,  a  quantity  of  rugs,  and  a  balcony,  to 
eat  such  meats  as  the  naib  had  at  his  disposal,  and  to 
wait  until  horses  were  sent  back  from  the  next  station  up 
the  road. 

27 


PERSIAN  MINIATURES 

There  might,  indeed,  be  something  else  to  do,  thought 
I  in  my  secret  heart — even  after  the  Sah'b  assured  me 
there  was  nothing  to  see  in  Resht.  Perhaps!  But  what 
if  your  theory  of  life  happens  to  be  that  there  is  something 
to  see  everywhere?  What  if  you  have  just  set  foot,  for 
the  first  time  in  your  life,  on  the  virgin  soil  of  Persia? 
What  if  you  find  yourself  in  an  inn  at  the  edge  of  a  Per- 
sian town,  which  lies  somewhere  beyond  the  balcony  in 
the  dark,  which  fills  the  night  with  strange  sounds  and 
smells  and  possibilities,  and  which  you  would  mightily 
like  to  prowl  in,  to  say  nothing  of  spending  a  night  in 
and  looking  at  by  daylight?  What,  however,  could  I 
do?  I  had  cheated  the  Sah'b  and  the  Khanum,  by  a  too 
literal  reading  of  a  friendly  invitation,  out  of  a  Golden 
Journey  to  Samarkand.  It  was  not  for  me,  therefore,  to 
hinder  them  from  hurrying  as  fast  as  asps  would  carry 
them  to  a  brand-new  house  in  Hamadan.  And,  after  all, 
there  were  enough  characteristic  things  to  see  in  my 
first  clapar  khaneh.  One  of  them  was  the  exchanging  of 
our  handy  Russian  money  for  a  sack  of  Persian  two-kran 
pieces,  worth  some  eighteen  cents  each,  which  with  the 
cartwheel  tomans  that  it  needs  ten  krans  to  make,  and  the 
tiny  shahis  of  which  there  are  twenty  in  a  kran,  constitute 
the  sole  coin  of  the  realm.  Then  came  the  affair  of  buy- 
ing our  "ticket"  for  Hamadan.  It  cost,  for  the  use  of 
one  carriage  and  the  four  horses  necessary  to  draw  it 
250  miles,  together  with  the  incidental  toll  charges  of 
the  Russian  road,  not  far  from  $100.  Evidently  one 
would  have  to  think  twice  before  travelling  in  Persia, 
thought  I,  who  dreamed  of  Isfahan  and  Shiraz.  True, 
three  persons,  or  as  many  more  as  can  squeeze  into  one 
carriage,  pay  no  more  than  one;  but  even  so  it  struck  me 

28 


ANABASIS 

that  in  some  other  parts  of  the  world  $33  might  take  one 
considerably  farther  than  250  miles.  However,  we  pro- 
ceeded to  follow  a  lantern  into  a  huge  shadowy  stable  at  the 
back  of  the  court  where  we  picked  out  our  carriage  for  the 
journey.  It  was  a  big  rattlety-bang  landau,  patched  and 
scratched  beyond  belief,  that  might  almost  have  come 
down  itself  from  Achaemenian  times.  I  thought  so  all  the 
more  when  the  Sah'b  told  me  that  the  contractor  who  ran 
this  particular  post  road  for  the  Russians  was  a  Parsee. 

The  night  began  to  look  darker  than  ever  when  the 
Russian  consul  telephoned  to  the  naib  for  another  team  of 
horses — though  handful  was  what  he  really  said.  He 
telephoned,  mind  you!  In  Persia!  The  naib  telephoned 
back,  at  the  top  of  his  voice,  that  the  only  handful  of  asps 
he  had  was  engaged.  The  Russian  consul,  not  suspecting 
that  a  newly  arrived  fellow-countryman  of  Mr.  W.  M. 
Shuster,  at  the  other  end  of  the  line,  was  highly  inter- 
ested in  this  practical  aspect  of  the  Anglo- Russian  Agree- 
ment of  1907,  replied  that  it  did  not  matter:  asps  he 
must  have.  He  was  of  course  within  his  rights,  for  this  is 
a  Russian  road.  Nevertheless  the  Sah'b,  as  a  subject 
of  a  friendly  semi-allied  Power,  and  as  a  frequent  client 
of  the  road,  went  over  to  interview  the  Russian  consulate. 
The  Russian  consulate,  as  the  paramount  Power  in  north 
Persia,  stuck  to  its  guns,  saying  that  the  mail  had 
precedence  over  all  travellers  and  that  the  naib  had  no 
business  to  sell  us  a  ticket  on  Wednesday  night.  So  the 
subject  of  the  semi-allied  friendly  Power  came  back  eating 
enraged  cow,  as  the  French  saying  goes.  And  we  sat 
twirling  our  thumbs  while  the  mail  jingled  away  to 
Tehran  and  beyond  the  balcony  invisible  Resht  filled  the 
night  with  romance. 

29 


PERSIAN  MINIATURES 

Hard  on  midnight,  when  we  got  tired  of  twirling  our 
thumbs  and  began  to  think  we  might  better  go  to  bed,  the 
naib  suddenly  produced  horses.  Out  of  the  lamplit  room, 
down  the  wooden  stair,  into  the  mud  puddle  at  the  bottom 
of  it,  through  the  smokily  lighted  arch  of  the  post-house  we 
hastened,  and  prepared  for  flight.  There  was  something 
dark  and  furtive  about  this  hasty  midnight  departure  that 
reminded  me  of  Louis  XVI  and  Marie  Antoinette,  when 
they  fled  away  to  Varennes  in  that  berline  of  Carlyle's. 
Into  our  berline  we  crammed  all  the  luggage  we  could 
between  the  seats,  over  the  whole  affair  we  spread  rugs 
and  cushions  so  as  to  make  a  species  of  bed,  and  the 
Sah'b  and  the  Khanum,  like  King  Louis  and  Queen 
Marie,  settled  themselves  with  what  ease  they  might 
in  this  Persian  sleeping  car,  while  I,  an  elderly  Dauphin, 
headed  the  opposite  way,  stuck  my  legs  between  them. 
Then  the  mekbter,  the  post-boy,  appeared  with  the  long- 
awaited  horses — and  when  I  saw  them  I  didn't  wonder 
that  they  were  called  asps! — an  auk's  egg  with  a  sleepy 
driver  under  it  mounted  the  box  in  vast  disgust,  and 
away  under  a  cloudy  moon  to  Varennes,  or  Hamadan, 
we  began  to  roll. 

in 

King  Louis  and  Queen  Marie  would  no  doubt  have  been 
highly  amused  had  they  known  how  thrilling  to  the  Dau- 
phin seemed  this  mild  adventure,  how  strange  the  gray 
moonlight  and  black  trees  of  which  he  caught  glimpses 
through  the  window  of  the  berline,  how  romantic  the 
jingle  of  bells  that  kept  growing  louder  or  fainter  through 
the  dark,  how  impossible  to  close  one's  eyes  upon  one's 
first  journey  in  Persia.  Between  two  and  three  o'clock 

30 


ANABASIS 

in  the  morning  the  berline  halted  at  the  first  stage  of  our 
anabasis.  This  was  at  an  invisible  place  called  Kudum, 
six  parasangs  out  of  Resht.  I  was  delighted  to  meet  an 
old  friend  in  so  unexpected  a  spot.  For  you  are  to  know 
that  a  parasang  is  no  invention  of  Xenophon,  but  a  word 
still  used  in  Persia  to  measure  distances,  under  the  Arabi- 
cized  form  offarsakh.  It  is,  however,  a  somewhat  vague 
term,  being  according  to  different  authorities  the  distance 
at  which  you  can  see  a  camel  and  distinguish  whether  it 
be  white  or  black,  the  distance  at  which  you  can  first 
hear  the  roll  of  an  approaching  drum,  or  the  distance 
which  a  loaded  mule  can  travel  in  an  hour.  It  varies 
accordingly  from  two  to  five  miles.  In  this  case  six 
farsakbs  is  equal  to  sixteen  miles. 

There  was  a  sound  of  voices,  of  horses  being  unhar- 
nessed and  led  away.  Then  a  kola,  which  is  the  true  name 
of  a  Persian  auk's  egg — or  any  other  hat,  for  that  matter 
—darkened  the  window,  and  a  post-boy  drawled  very 
distinctly  the  two  syllables: 

"Malnist." 

These  mysterious  words  elicited  such  sounds  of  des- 
peration from  the.Sah'b  that  at  first  I  couldn't  get  out  of 
him  what  they  meant.  It  finally  appeared  that  they 
meant  "there  is  no  property,"  and  that  on  the  road  prop- 
erty and  asps  are  interchangeable  terms.  Expostulation 
was  of  no  avail.  Bribery  was  of  no  avail.  The  post 
had  just  gone  on  in  four,  no  in  five,  gharries — gari  is  a 
true  Persian  word — and  there  was  no  property — for  im- 
patient subjects  of  friendly  semi-allied  Powers  or  even 
for  fellow-citizens  of  Mr.  W.  Morgan  Shuster.  There 
would  be  no  property  for  an  hour,  or  at  most  an  hour  and 
a  half.  So  there  was  nothing  for  it  but  to  snooze  pleas- 


PERSIAN  MINIATURES 

antly  in  the  berime  while  carts  rattled  by  on  the  Russian 
road,  while  strings  of  mules  and  donkeys  went  by  with 
much  jingling  of  bells,  while  caravans  went  by,  real 
caravans  of  real  camels,  slouching  dimly  past  to  a  extraor- 
dinarily broken  music  of  different-toned  bells.  Beside 
them  dark  figures  trudged  silently.  I  thought  of  that 
wretched  Belgian  lady  and  smiled,  secretly,  at  my  own 
foolishness. 

The  next  thing  I  knew  it  was  past  five  in  the  morning, 
twice  the  hour  and  a  half  the  mekbter  had  promised,  and 
we  were  still  standing  serenely  in  front  of  the  post- 
house  at  Kudum,  without  property  and  without  prospect 
of  property.  As  the  Sah'b  showed  no  sign  of  being  con- 
scious of  this  intolerable  situation,  I  crawled  gingerly 
out  of  the  berline  to  stretch  my  cramped  legs.  A  vague 
figure  materialised  off  the  ground  behind  us  and  walked 
away.  Other  vague  figures  trudged  down  the  road, 
kola  on  head  and  bag  or  tool  on  shoulder.  It  was  be- 
ginning to  get  light,  and  it  drizzled  a  little.  Events  of 
the  deepest  significance  for  one's  first  morning  in  Persia! 
"Call  the  mekbter,"  suddenly  suggested  the  Sah'b  out  of 
the  berline.  Having  no  other  means  of  communicating 
with  a  mekbter,  I  proceeded  to  pound  on  the  closed  shutter 
of  the  post-house.  After  a  time  the  shutter  was  with- 
drawn, a  greasy  kola  stuck  part  way  out — and  nothing 
more  happened. 

In  the  end,  of  course,  it  was  the  Sah'b  who  got  us  out 
of  Kudum.  Once  under  way,  we  soon  began  to  climb — 
into  a  country  of  hills  and  woods  that  gradually  nar- 
rowed to  the  valley  of  a  river.  Sefid  Rud  is  the  name  of 
it,  or  White  River.  I  smiled  again,  thinking  of  another 
White  River  whose  valley  in  Vermont  I  have  long  known. 

32 


ANABASIS 

The  Persian  White  River  is  a  much  bigger  stream,  flow- 
ing where  first  I  saw  it  in  a  wide,  sandy  channel,  and  its 
valley  is  on  a  more  heroic  scale.  The  sky  cleared  as  we 
went  on,  and  we  caught  glimpses  in  front  of  us  of  the  huge 
mountain  wall  of  Elburz,  with  scarfs  of  cloud  drifting 
across  its  incredible  heights.  But  the  lumber  rafts  float- 
ing down  on  the  current,  the  colour  of  the  autumn  foli- 
age, the  ferns  and  brooks  beside  the  road,  and  the  talk 
of  my  two  companions,  made  it  hard  to  believe  that  we 
were  really  in  Persia.  No  Vermonter,  to  be  sure,  would 
ever  walk  abroad  like  the  peasants  we  met  in  such  rags 
of  such  faded  blue.  The  women's  rags  were  gayer,  and 
they  often  carried  a  child  on  their  backs.  Gayest  of  all 
were  the  high  two-wheeled  carts  we  passed,  with  hoop 
tops,  and  the  bigger  four-wheeled  gharries,  with  passen- 
gers sitting  on  piles  of  boxes  and  bales.  And  the  harness 
of  their  horses  was  bright  with  brass  and  with  dangling 
tabs  of  brilliant  wool  or  polished  metal.  The  khans 
and  tea  houses  along  the  way,  for  the  use  of  such  travellers 
as  do  not  travel  post,  were  of  the  now  familiar  peaked 
gray  thatch.  And  we  passed  a  camp  of  camels,  which 
always  travel  at  night  except  in  cold  weather.  Their 
packs  and  pack-saddles  lay  scattered  on  the  ground  and 
the  big  beasts  crouched  in  rows  or  circles,  munching  hay 
as  superciliously  as  if  it  had  been  Nesselrode  pudding. 
But  while  I  knew  in  my  heart  that  under  these  casual 
unfamiliarities  life  is  after  all  life,  whether  in  Persia  or 
Vermont,  and  that  a  man  will  probably  find  out  more 
about  it  by  sticking  to  his  own  valley,  I  somehow  derived 
an  immense  inner  satisfaction  from  the  mere  fact  that 
this  was  Persia  and  not  Vermont.  On  such  simplicities 
hangs  the  happiness  of  man! 

33 


PERSIAN  MINIATURES 

Suddenly,  toward  noon,  just  before  we  reached  the 
post-house  of  Jamshidabad,  a  strange  thing  happened. 
We  had  been  climbing  steadily  through  autumn  woods, 
with  the  picture  growing  increasingly  clear  in  front 
of  us  of  the  northern  wall  of  Persia,  to  say  nothing  of  the 
problem  of  getting  over  it,  when,  at  a  turn  of  the  road, 
woods,  autumn  leaves,  the  very  trees,  disappeared  as  if 
by  magic.  We  had  the  better  opportunity  to  take  in 
this  extraordinary  change  because,  again,  there  was  no 
property  at  Jamshidabad.  However,  if  all  the  post- 
houses  of  Persia  were  like  Jamshidabad  the  fashion  of 
driving  in  day  and  night  might  become  less  popular  than 
it  is.  The  rugs  on  the  brick  floor  looked  clean  enough  to 
sleep  on — though  the  real  proof  of  that  would  be  to  try  it! 
Behind  the  house  opened  a  little  walled  quadrangle,  cut 
into  quarters  by  two  transverse  paths,  with  flower  beds 
in  each  corner  and  a  round  brimming  pool  in  the  centre. 
We  lunched  on  the  porch  in  front,  looking  down  on  a  wide, 
sandy  valley  of  parted  water,  some  of  the  threads  steely 
bright,  others  strangely  blue.  The  opposite  slope  of  the 
valley  was  cleft  by  a  ravine  whose  mouth  was  stopped  or 
deflected  by  a  flat  hill  spur.  We  amused  ourselves  by 
building  castles  there,  within  hearing  of  the  river  and  in 
sight  both  of  the  green  lower  region  of  woods  to  the  north 
and  of  those  higher  and  barer  peaks  of  the  south  toward 
which  we  were  bound. 

It  was  the  middle  of  the  afternoon  before  we  succeeded 
in  getting  away  from  Jamshidabad.  The  road  houses  of 
the  bleak  country  into  which  we  now  began  to  penetrate 
farther  indicated  the  suddenness  of  the  change  from  the 
lower  valley.  They  no  longer  had  thatched  or  peaked 
roofs,  but  flat  ones  of  mud.  All  the  more  surprising,  there- 

34 


ANABASIS 

fore,  was  it,  after  having  begun  to  get  used  to  this  timber- 
less  land,  to  dip  down  to  the  river  again  and  discover  a 
plantation  of  olive  trees.  Such  tall  and  bushy  olive  trees, 
too,  I  never  saw  in  Greece  or  Sicily.  As  a  matter  of 
fact,  they  were  planted,  the  Sah'b  told  me,  by  veritable 
Greeks,  who  form  quite  a  colony  at  Resht  and  who  cannot 
exist  without  the  olive  oil  which  forms  no  part  of  the 
Persian  menu. 

There  at  Rudbar  we  changed  horses  again  and  rattled 
away  through  a  long  village  street  dimly  lighted  by  a 
few  lamps  but  allowing  one  to  catch  vague  moving  pic- 
tures of  shops,  tea  houses,  smithies,  and  an  American 
sewing  machine  which  had  somehow  found  its  way  into 
the  Greek  olive  grove  of  that  Persian  valley.  Beyond  the 
olive  trees  the  valley  narrowed  to  a  black  gorge,  where 
the  air  at  last  began  to  feel  like  the  end  of  November. 
And  the  wind  blew  so  hard,  especially  when  we  crossed 
the  river  on  a  long  Russian  bridge,  that  we  were  glad 
enough  to  get  out  at  the  post-house  of  Menjil,  just  be- 
yond, and  drink  some  scalding  tea.  Menjil  is,  so  to 
speak,  another  White  River  Junction;  for  three  valleys 
come  together  there,  and  a  caravan  trail,  not  carriage- 
able— as  the  French  and  Italians  conveniently  say — 
follows  the  Sefid  Rud  part  way  to  Tabriz,  while  the  main 
road  presently  branches  off  to  Tehran. 

The  latter  was  the  one  we  followed,  through  a  high,  dark, 
windy  land  of  stars,  with  water  somewhere  in  the  bottom 
of  it.  I  caught  the  pallor  of  that  water,  and  the  delicious 
sound  of  it,  when  we  stopped  at  midnight  at  a  post-house 
appropriately  named  Bala  Bala,  which  means  High  High. 
Louis  and  Marie  Antoinette  slept  like  reasonable  beings, 
having  enjoined  me  when  I  got  out  to  stretch  my  legs  to 

35 


PERSIAN  MINIATURES 

see  to  it  that  the  naib  kept  his  word  and  brought  us  asps 
in  twenty  minutes.  The  twenty  minutes  passed,  and  the 
half  hour,  while  I,  false  friend,  dallied  to  admire  a  caravan 
that  jingled  up  out  of  the  dark  in  front  of  us.  I  could 
make  out  the  shapes  of  curved  necks,  high-piled  bales, 
and  marching  men,  that  passed  to  a  strange  accompani- 
ment of  bells.  This  obbligato  seemed  to  play  in  a  chord 
of  four  notes,  of  which  the  loudest  and  deepest  was  also 
the  rarest.  The  caravan  rounded  the  curve  of  the  cbapar 
kbaneb,  jingled  off  up  a  black  side  ravine,  jingled  back 
more  softly  on  the  upper  side  of  the  tilted  hair-pin  bend, 
and  finally  made  away  diminuendo  in  the  direction  of 
Menjil,  the  bells  growing  fainter  and  fainter  till  there  was 
nothing  to  hear  but  the  rush  of  the  water  in  the  dim 
valley  below.  Near  by,  in  the  post-house,  I  could  see  our 
driver  and  the  meklter  and  half  a  dozen  ragamuffins 
among  whom  might  or  might  not  be  our  new  driver,  drink- 
ing tea  and  smoking  those  straight  black  pipes — with 
enough  opium  in  them,  perhaps,  to  make  them  indiffer- 
ent as  to  whether  they  stayed  on  the  road  or  pitched  over  a 
precipice  into  the  river.  I  watched  and  listened,  lost  to 
all  sense  of  duty.  But  the  Sah'b  mumbled  something 
sleepily  out  of  the  carriage  and  I,  brought  back  at  last 
to  the  realities  of  life,  made  such  sounds  to  the  naib  that 
his  post-boy  presently  brought  us  our  handful. 

One  remembers  the  nights  of  life  for  reasons  the  most 
diverse;  but  among  remembered  nights  I  think  I  shall 
always  include  that  particular  one.  The  sky  was  so 
clear  and  the  air,  after  all,  so  mild,  that  we  had  dropped 
the  top  of  the  berline.  The  wind  in  our  faces  was  de- 
liciously  fresh,  therefore,  and  as  we  lay  comfortably  tucked 
up  in  rugs  and  pillows  we  could  open  our  eyes,  without 

36 


ANABASIS 

the  slightest  effort,  upon  the  dark  shapes  of  the  moun- 
tains, the  endless  caravans  we  met  or  overtook,  the  moon 
that  suddenly  peered  from  behind  some  jagged  height. 
It  was  amazing  what  a  quantity  of  silver  contrived  to 
drip  out  of  that  dried-up  little  moon  and  what  tricks  it 
played  in  that  wild  pass  Part  of  the  magic,  of  course, 
was  that  I  was  only  half  conscious.  But  I  remember 
waking  up  once,  or  passing  from  one  dream  into  another, 
in  a  hollow  enchanted  with  moonlight,  where  we  stood 
still  while  invisible  water  rushed  past  us  and  somewhere 
over  our  heads  echoed  a  long-drawn  chime  of  camel  bells. 

IV 

The  second  morning  found  us  stranded  again  beside 
the  road,  in  a  barren  place  called  Molla  AH,  where  the 
dawn  broke  over  a  background  of  the  Venetian  school. 
Near  by  were  the  same  slim  poplars  of  a  few  faded  leaves, 
and  in  the  distance  were  the  same  sharp  blue  peaks. 
They  presently  turned  rosy,  however.  And  what  is 
more  they  stayed  so,  even  after  the  sun  had  cleared  the 
heights  of  Elburz  and  brought  the  world  back  to  its 
normal  colour.  It  was  a  stonier  and  loftier  world  than 
the  valley  of  olive  trees  where  the  light  had  left  us,  made 
up  entirely  of  ruddy  rocks,  cleft  by  deep  canyons  and  over- 
looked by  soaring  crags  where  the  road  looped  and  zig- 
zagged in  the  most  fantastic  way.  We  gained  the  sum- 
mit of  one  pass,  only  to  plunge  down  again  into  new 
depths  and  narrower.  In  them,  while  we  waited  for 
horses  at  the  post-house  of  Yuz  Bashi  Chai — a  perfectly 
authentic  Turkish  name  meaning  Captain's  Brook — a 
caravan  of  Canterbury  pilgrims,  or  pilgrims  from  Kerbela 
rather,  was  good  enough  to  ride  under  the  terrace  on  which 

37 


PERSIAN  MINIATURES 

we  kicked  our  heels.  A  Persian  Wife  of  Bath  was  one  of 
the  most  conspicuous  figures  in  the  cortege,  being  en- 
veloped from  top  to — well,  not  quite  to — toe  in  a  shape- 
less black  domino  which  I  believe  they  call  a  chader.  As 
she  rode  astride  like  the  men,  we  had  no  trouble  in  seeing 
her  toes,  which  were  encased  in  emerald  green  stockings 
that  were  apparently  a  part  of  some  wonderful  trousers 
she  wore.  And  the  face  of  the  poor  wretch  was  com- 
pletely covered  by  a  thick  white  cloth  which  had  in  it 
only  a  strip  of  open-work  embroidery  in  front  of  her  eyes 
for  her  to  look  out  of.  Other  ladies,  who  had  small  chil- 
dren with  them,  sat  on  little  railed  platforms  slung  on 
either  side  of  a  mule's  pack  saddle.  Is  not  such  a  plat- 
form what  used  to  be  called  a  cacolet,  before  the  word 
and  the  convenience  passed  out  of  use  in  our  part  of  the 
world?  And  still  others  crouched  uncomfortably  in  a 
double  litter  which  the  Persians  name  a  kejaveb,  a  sort 
of  domed  cage  or  kennel  mounted  in  pairs  on  a  pack  ani- 
mal. 

From  the  Captain's  Brook  we  climbed  again,  this  time 
to  the  real  top  of  the  pass,  7,000  feet  above  the  Caspian— 
though  the  Caspian,  you  remember,  lies  a  little  lower  than 
the  Black  Sea.  A  sort  of  bare  plateau  was  here,  over- 
looking various  branching  valleys  and  overlooked  in  turn 
by  loftier  snow  peaks  of  Elburz.  That  northern  ram- 
part of  Persia  is  really  the  most  imposing  range  in  Asia, 
after  the  Himalayas,  though  here  it  reaches  a  height  of 
no  more  than  ten  or  eleven  thousand  feet.  In  this  wild 
place  we  came  upon  the  gravestone  of  a  Russian  en- 
gineer. "He  who  dies  in  a  strange  land  dies  the  death 
of  the  martyrs,"  say  the  people  of  the  Prophet.  And  in- 
deed it  must  have  been  an  unhomelike  place  for  a  son  of  the 

38 


PERSIAN  MINIATURES 

steppes  to  breathe  his  last  in,  among  those  remote  heights 
whose  older  associations  are  all  of  the  Fire  Worshippers 
and  of  the  gruesome  order  of  the  Assassins.  But  so 
many  of  our  own  race  have  left  their  bones  in  unlikely 
corners  of  the  earth  that  we  did  not  need  to  feel  too 
sentimental  about  the  engineer  who  lay  on  that  great 
divide,  among  the  rocks  he  had  made  passable  for  the 
feet  of  his  countrymen. 

From  there  on  we  descended,  overtaking  at  Buinek 
another  Russian,  a  live  one,  reported  to  us  as  having  come 
up  with  the  post.  We  looked  darkly  at  him,  suspecting  him 
to  be  the  guilty  man  for  whom  the  consul  at  Resht  had 
snatched  our  horses.  However,  there  were  soon  better 
things  to  think  about  than  our  wrongs.  For  another  brusque 
change  brought  us  into  a  new  country  that  opened  in 
front  of  us  almost  as  far  as  we  could  see,  till  the  sunlight 
caught  a  white,  upturned  rim  at  its  outer  edges.  "This/' 
said  the  Sah'b,  "is  Persia."  I  looked  at  Persia  with  vast 
interest,  thinking  involuntarily  again  of  our  Belgian  lady. 
There  were  certainly  no  roses  or  nightingales  about, 
neither  palaces  of  porcelain  or  so  much  as  a  camel.  It 
was,  though,  a  country  of  a  kind  I  had  never  seen  before: 
wide,  flat,  or  at  most  sloping  a  trifle  toward  the  east, 
tawny-coloured,  with  a  tawniness  that  had  an  under- 
painting  of  pink  in  it,  and  walled  on  the  north  by  the 
snowy  serrations  of  Elburz.  They  looked  less  formidable 
than  before,  and  with  good  reason,  since  this  side  of  the 
mountain  is  three  or  four  thousand  feet  higher  than  the 
other.  But  what  struck  me  most  was  the  light  that  lay 
over  the  land,  of  utter  clearness,  yet  not  hard  or  cold, 
and  indescribably  serene. 

As  we  rolled  down  the  long,  tilted  plain  I  looked  hope- 

40 


ANABASIS 

fully  for  the  white  cone  of  Demavend — that  not  quite  ex- 
tinct volcano  which  towers  19,000  feet  behind  Tehran — 
in  vain.  But  the  city  of  Kazvin  soon  made  something 
else  to  look  for,  darkening  the  tawny  levels  with  its  blur. 
The  vicinity  of  it  began  to  be  indicated  by  the  look  of  the 
fields  about  us,  by  thickening  orchards  and  clumps  of 
poplar  trees.  Then,  as  sunset  started  to  do  poetic  things 
with  the  tops  of  the  mountains,  we  saw  above  the  trees 
a  brown  city  wall,  irregularly  scalloped,  and  above  the 
brown  city  wall  two  domes  blue  as  jewels. 


Ill 

KAZVIN 

Let  me  give  you  somewhat  to  memorise  Casbyn,  wherein  have 
been  acted  many  Tragick  scenes,  in  their  time  very  terrible. 
Sir  Thomas  Herbert:  SOME  YEERES  TRAVELS 


WE   ENTERED    Kazvin   by   a  gateway 
which  among  gateways  was  a  sight  to  see. 
The  frame  of  wall  about  it  was  gaily  faced 
with  green  and  yellow  tiles,  which  also 
encrusted  the  stubby  pinnacles  rising  above  the  wall  on 
either  side.     When  I  looked  at  those  tiles  again,  in  a  more 
uncompromising  light,  I  admitted  to  myself  that  I  had 
seen  much  better  tiles.     But  the  quaint  and  decorative 
effect  of  them  in  the  twilight  should  have  consoled  Ma- 
dame T  Inspect  rice  for  her  porcelain  palaces,  as  they  made 
me  forget  the  loss  of  Resht.    Through  that  gate  we 

42 


KAZVIN 

clattered  into  a  long  street,  not  quite  straight  and  only 
wide  enough  for  two  carriages  to  pass,  which  was 
crowded  with  strolling  kolas.  The  lamps  had  just  begun 
to  twinkle  in  the  little  shops  on  either  side,  bringing 
out  sudden  glints  of  metal,  spots  of  colour,  shining  eyes, 
shallow  porticoes  full  of  tea  drinkers,  big  arches  leading 
into  dark  courts,  and  upper  balconies  where  one  caught 
now  and  then  the  red  glow  of  a  pipe.  These  things 
and  many  more  delighted  me  so  much  that  I  at  once  put 
up  a  petition  to  Allah  the  Merciful,  the  Compassionate, 
to  the  end  that  with  heaves,  glanders,  and  all  other 
equine  ills  might  be  smitten  the  asps  of  the  post-house 
of  Kazvin. 

The  street  presently  split  in  two  in  front  of  a  high  mud 
wall,  rudely  crenellated  like  the  wall  of  the  city.  This 
we  proceeded  to  skirt,  turning  first  to  the  right  and  then 
to  the  left,  till  we  came  out  into  such  an  esplanade  as  I 
have  seen  only  in  certain  great  western  capitals.  Hum- 
ble New  York,  at  any  rate,  has  never  been  able  to  treat 
herself  to  such  a  perspective.  At  the  end  by  which 
we  entered  it  the  crenellated  wall  gave  place  to  a  monu- 
mental white  archway,  looking  down  the  length  of  the 
esplanade  toward  an  imposing  palace  at  the  opposite 
end.  We  drove  toward  it,  between  lines  of  plane  trees 
and  locust  trees  still  in  the  sere,  the  yellow  leaf,  that 
partly  hid  the  low  houses  behind  them.  Arriving  in 
front  of  the  palace  I  had  time  to  make  out  between  the 
poplars  surrounding  it  a  lower  arcade,  an  upper  loggia, 
and  certain  fanciful  decorations  in  coloured  tiles,  before 
we  turned  the  corner  of  it.  And  I  was  wondering  whe- 
ther it  were  the  governor's  palace  or  the  headquarters  of 
the  Russian  commandant,  when  we  suddenly  drove 

43 


PERSIAN  MINIATURES 

through  an  arch  into  a  brick  court  behind  it.  This  porce- 
lain palace,  if  you  please,  was  the  cbapar  kkaneh ! 

Allah  the  Merciful,  the  Compassionate,  heard  my  cry. 
At  the  Sah'b's  anxious  inquiry  with  regard  to  asps,  the 
naib  solemnly  swore  he  had  none.  Now  this  was  a  patent 
and  easily  refutable  contravention  of  the  truth.  At 
Kazvin,  if  anywhere,  there  are  always  asps;  for  at  this 
halfway  house  the  Russian  road  forks,  one  branch  going 
east  to  Tehran  and  one  south  to  Hamadan.  But  by  the 
time  the  naib  got  around  to  confessing  that,  upon  minute 
search,  there  might  be  found  in  his  stables  a  jade  or  two, 
just  returned  starved  and  breathless  from  a  journey  of 
many  parasangs,  the  good-natured  Sah'b  took  pity  on  his 
passenger.  He  decided  that  a  night  in  a  bed  might  not, 
after  all,  be  amiss  after  two  nights  in  a  berline. 

At  close  quarters  the  porcelain  palace  looked  a  little 
less  splendid  than  it  first  appeared  at  the  end  of  its  vista 
in  the  Persian  twilight.  Nevertheless,  the  white  arcade 
opening  upon  the  court,  surmounted  by  an  upper  terrace, 
was  highly  effective.  Within,  two  spacious  brick  corri- 
dors cut  through  the  lower  floor  at  right  angles.  An 
anxious  underling  in  a  long  black  coat  and  a  tall  black 
kola  stepped  forward  to  escort  us  to  our  rooms.  The 
Sah'b's  and  the  Khanum's  was  perhaps  more  luxuriously 
fitted  out  with  rugs  and  sketchy  toilet  arrangements. 
What  mine  lacked  in  these  humble  conveniences  it  made 
up  in  its  palatial  size,  in  its  glimpse  of  the  esplanade 
through  outer  arches  and  poplars,  and  in  its  floor  of  square 
tiles — turquoise  and  dark  blue,  set  obliquely  to  the  lines 
of  the  room.  And  while  I  discovered  to  my  sorrow  that 
the  bad  Turkish  which  had  proved  vaguely  intelligible  to 
certain  of  the  inhabitants  of  Baku  and  even  of  Resht 

44 


KAZVIN 

produced  nothing  but  blank  looks  upon  the  countenances 
of  Kazvin,  I  did  contrive  at  last  to  wash  off  some  of  the 
dust  of  the  Russian  road  into  a  tin  basin  set  on  a  chair. 

Having  ordered  dinner,  we  took  a  stroll  in  the  now  dark 
esplanade.  At  our  end  of  it  a  quantity  of  fruit  and  vege- 
table stalls  were  set  up  under  the  plane  trees.  Lanterns 
lighted  the  overhanging  branches  and  obscurely  made 
visible  the  tiny  panes  of  certain  high  windows  behind 
them,  and  brought  a  little  colour  out  of  pyramids  of 
apples,  melons,  and  grapes.  The  latter  did  not  look 
quite  like  the  ones  which  Sir  John  Chardin  describes  as 
"the  fairest  Grape  in  Persia  .  .  .  being  of  a  Gold 
Colour,  transparent  and  as  big  as  a  small  Olive,"  of  which 
he  further  avers  that  "they  also  make  the  strongest  Wine 
in  the  World,  and  the  most  luscious."  But  it  is  a  long 
time  since  the  French  jeweller  of  Isfahan  saw  them,  and 
it  was  now  November.  So  we  treated  ourselves  to  a  long 
yellow  melon,  and  after  a  look  at  the  ghostly  gateway 
at  the  farther  end  of  the  esplanade  returned  to  our  inn. 

Dinner  was  somewhat  provisionally  served  in  a  big 
brick  room  ornamented  with  Russian  advertisements  of 
beer,  vodka,  and  agricultural  machinery.  The  table- 
ware, moreover,  was  not  quite  of  palaces,  or  even  of  third- 
class  hotels  in  other  parts  of  the  world.  But  the  feast 
itself  left  nothing  to  be  desired — or  so  it  seemed  to  us, 
who  had  not  indulged  in  what  might  be  called  one  square 
meal  since  we  left  our  Caspian  steamer  two  days  before. 
And  after  it  I,  in  spite  of  my  propensity  to  prowl  in 
strange  towns  at  night,  was  good  for  nothing  but  bed. 
Yet  even  that  night  was  not  without  its  impressions.  For 
twice  before  morning  was  I  roused  by  an  extraordinary 
uproar  in  the  esplanade.  It  made  itself  vaguely  known 

45 


PERSIAN  MINIATURES 

through  my  dreams  of  camel  bells  by  a  wild  clamour  of 
pipes,  trumpets,  and  drums,  blaring  out  something  that 
neither  was  nor  was  not  a  tune.  The  first  time  I  jumped 
up  to  look  out  of  the  window,  seeing  nothing  but  a  smoky 
flare  of  torches  in  the  distance.  The  second  time  I  merely 
turned  over  in  bed,  saying  luxuriously  to  myself:  "This 
is  Persia!"  Strange  what  will  exhilarate  or  console  the 
heart  of  man!  But  I  have  no  idea  what  it  was.  A 
wedding  procession,  perhaps?  Or  one  of  those  wonderful 
orchestral  performances,  a  nakara,  that  used  to  greet  the 
rising  of  the  Persian  sun — and  still  may  in  some  places, 
for  aught  I  know?  Or  could  it  have  been  a  dream  of  that 
picturesque  orgy  which  honest  George  Manwaring  de- 
scribes in  his  account  of  the  meeting  between  Abbas  the 
Great  and  Sir  Anthony  Sherley  in  1600?  After  a  banquet 
in  the  palace  of  Kazvin  and  a  festivity  in  the  Bazaar, 
one  feature  of  which  were  twenty  dancing  girls  "very 
richly  apparelled,"  the  Persian  king  took  the  English 
adventurer  on  his  arm  and  walked  "in  every  street  in 
the  city,  the  twenty  women  going  before,  singing  and 
dancing,  and  his  noblemen  coming  after,  with  each  of 
them  one  of  our  company  by  the  hand,  and  at  every  turn- 
ing there  was  variety  of  music,  and  lamps  hanging  on 
either  side  of  their  streets,  of  seven  heights  one  above 
another,  which  made  a  glorious  shew." 

ii 

The  next  morning  was  a  heavenly  one,  warm  and  clear, 
throwing  such  a  light  on  Kazvin  that  the  Sah'b — may  his 
shadow  never  grow  less! — who  had  known  me  too  long 
to  be  ignorant  of  my  simple  curiosity  about  the  outward 
appearances  of  life  and  my  incurable  habit  of  carrying  a 

46 


KAZVIN 

camera  over  my  shoulder,  postponed  his  first  view  of 
that  new  house  in  Hamadan  long  enough  to  let  me  prowl 
a  little  in  the  fallen  capital  of  the  Sophies. 

Among  the  cities  of  Persia,  Kazvin  is  by  no  means  one 
of  the  oldest  or  of  the  most  famous.  Still,  it  is  able  to 
boast  a  reasonable  antiquity,  having  been  founded,  as 
the  story  goes,  by  the  Sasanian  king  Shapur  the  Great, 
who  reigned  from  the  day  he  was  born  in  309  to  the  day 
he  died  in  379.  Kazvin  entered  upon  a  more  authentic 
period  of  its  history  in  the  time  of  the  Caliph  Harun  al 
Rashid,  himself  half  a  Persian,  who  built  a  mosque  there 
in  786  and  otherwise  beautified  the  town.  It  had  the 
honour  to  be  captured  some  three  hundred  years  later  by 
the  Old  Man  of  the  Mountain,  chief  of  the  order  of  the 
Assassins,  whose  modern  successor  is  that  loyal  Indian 
personage  the  Aga  Khan.  Kazvin  was  captured  again 
and  all  but  destroyed  by  the  Mongols  in  1220.  Enough 
was  left  of  it,  however,  for  Hulagu  Khan  to  make  his 
headquarters  there  in  1256  when  he  set  about  sweeping 
the  Assassins  out  of  their  mountain  eyrie  of  Alamut,  in 
the  Elburz,  thirty  miles  away.  Toward  the  end  of  the 
next  century  the  place  was  again  captured  and  destroyed 
by  Timur  and  his  Tartars.  But  in  1 548  Tahmasp  Shah, 
second  of  the  Safevi  dynasty,  finding  Tabriz  a  little  too 
near  the  Turks  for  comfort,  moved  his  capital  to  Kazvin. 
And  during  the  next  half  century  or  so,  until  Abbas  the 
Great  decided  that  Isfahan  suited  him  better,  the  city 
enjoyed  the  period  of  its  greatest  prosperity. 

A  number  of  celebrated  Persians  were  born  in  Kazvin, 
among  them  being  that  half-fabulous  fabulist  Lokman, 
the  Oriental  Aesop,  the  historian  Musteufi,  the  poet 
Kazvini,  and  the  painter  Mir  I  mad,  whom  Abbas  the 

47 


PERSIAN  MINIATURES 

Great  caused  to  be  put  to  death  for  a  too  witty  poem. 
And  they  say  that  when  the  Indian  Mogul  Jahangir 
heard  about  it  he  burst  into  tears,  crying  out  against  the 
cruelty  of  the  Persian  Shah,  whom  he  would  gladly  have 
paid  for  poor  Mir  I  mad  his  weight  in  pearls!  Many  other 
renowned  people  have  lived  or  died  in  Kazvin,  and  famous 
Europeans  not  a  few  have  described  it  in  their  travels. 
Whether  Marco  Polo  actually  passed  that  way  in  1280  I 
do  not  quite  make  out  from  his  entrancing  book.  But 
the  Spaniard  Don  Ruy  Gonzalez  di  Clavijo,  who  went 
to  Samarkand  on  an  embassy  to  Timur  in  1404,  passed 
through  Kazvin.  Pietro  della  Valle  stopped  there  in 
1618.  The  English  ambassador  Sir  Dodmore  Cotton 
died  and  was  buried  there  in  1628,  as  his  companion  Sir 
Thomas  Herbert  so  inimitably  relates.  Sir  John  Chardin 
spent  four  months  there  in  1674.  Master  Anthony 
Jenkinson  took  up  the  affairs  of  the  Muscovy  Company 
with  Tahmasp  Shah  in  his  new  capital  in  1562,  followed 
by  Arthur  Edwards  in  1 566.  And  during  the  eighteenth 
century  Elton,  Hanway,  and  several  other  Englishmen 
connected  with  the  British  Russia  Company  might  have 
been  seen  on  that  handsome  esplanade. 

Englishmen  have  always  been  great  travellers  and 
great  writers  of  travels,  and  so  many  of  them  have  walked 
the  esplanade  of  Kazvin  that  I  cannot  begin  to  catalogue  , 
the  associations  it  has  with  men  of  our  race.  Whereat 
let  no  American  prick  up  patriotic  ears.  For  when  Sir 
Dodmore  Cotton,  for  instance,  died  in  the  city  of  Tah- 
masp Shah  my  own  ancestors  had  not  quite  made  up  their 
minds  to  move  from  Old  England  to  New  England;  so 
that  for  Sir  Dodmore  Cotton  and  his  contemporaries  I 
have  quite  as  close  a  fellow  feeling  as  any  Briton  born. 


KAZVIN 

And  among  those  contemporaries,  among  all  the  English- 
men indeed  who  have  visited  Kazvin,  none  makes  a  more 
picturesque  figure  than  that  Sir  Anthony  Sherley  of  whom 
I  just  spoke — unless  it  be  his  brother  Sir  Robert  Sherley. 
This  Sir  Anthony  was,  I  fear,  a  sad  dog,  and  one  who 
might  serve  to  point  the  moral  and  adorn  the  tale  of  a 
German  historian  of  the  British  Empire.  Requiring 
him,  however,  to  adorn  my  own  tale,  I  shall  take  pains  to 
point  out  at  once  that  he  was  discredited  in  his  own  day, 
which  was  much  less  squeamish  than  ours.  And  I  shall 
add  that  even  in  his  follies  he  illustrates  the  difference 
between  the  gentleman  adventurer,  that  most  typical  of 
British  products,  and  the  equally  characteristic  German 
type  of  the  secret  agent.  Sir  Anthony  was  the  scion 
of  a  country  gentleman  of  Sussex,  of  whom  the  most  that 
can  be  said  is  that  he  lived  to  see  his  three  sons  celebrated, 
in  Shakespeare's  lifetime,  in  a  play  called  "Travailes  of 
the  Three  English  Brothers,"  and  two  of  them  "worn  like 
flowers  in  the  breasts  and  bosoms  of  foreign  princes." 
He  is  also  supposed  to  have  suggested  to  King  James  I 
the  idea  of  creating  the  order  of  baronets.  For  the  rest, 
he  was  most  successful  in  getting  himself  into  debt.  This 
trait  was  inherited  in  a  conspicuous  degree  by  the  young 
Anthony.  The  latter  went  to  Oxford  long  enough  to 
acquire  "the  ornaments  of  a  gentleman,"  and  then  opened 
the  chapter  of  his  adventures  by  accompanying  the  Earl 
of  Leicester  to  the  Low  Countries,  in  that  campaign  of 
1586  which  cost  Sir  Philip  Sidney  his  life.  In  1591,  going 
with  Essex  to  the  wars  in  France,  Sherley  got  himself 
decorated  for  bravery  by  Henri  IV — to  the  fury  of  Queen 
Elizabeth,  who  cried:  "I  will  not  have  my  sheep  marked 
by  a  strange  brand,  nor  suffer  them  to  follow  the  pipe  of  a 

49 


PERSIAN  MINIATURES 

foreign  shepherd!"  This  scrape  and  his  marriage  got 
him  into  so  much  trouble  that  in  1 596  he  sought  peace  on 
the  high  seas,  setting  forth  with  a  small  fleet  of  six  vessels 
to  capture  from  the  Portuguese  the  island  of  Sao  Thome, 
in  the  Gulf  of  Guinea.  Having  raided  the  town  of  San- 
tiago, in  the  Cape  Verde  Islands,  he  decided  that  the 
West  Indies  offered  a  more  promising  field  for  his  worthy 
endeavours  than  the  Gulf  of  Guinea,  and  he  descended 
in  turn  on  Dominica,  Margarita,  Santa  Marta,  and 
Jamaica — with  little  profit  to  the  inhabitants  and  not 
much  more  to  himself.  Being  deserted  at  Havana  by 
his  companions,  he  returned  to  England  and  engaged  in  a 
brief  privateering  cruise  with  his  patron  Essex.  The 
latter  then  sent  him  to  Italy  to  help  Don  Cesare  d'Este 
gain  the  Dukedom  of  Ferrara.  But  this  matter  had 
been  settled  by  the  Pope  before  Sherley  arrived  on  the 
scene.  Our  disappointed  gentleman  adventurer  therefore 
consoled  himself  for  a  time  by  seeing  the  sights  of 
Venice. 

It  was  there  that  his  thoughts  were  first  turned  toward 
Persia,  by  the  merchants  and  travellers  whom  he  met  on 
the  Rialto.  Their  accounts  of  the  magnificence  and 
liberality  of  Shah  Abbas  the  Great  so  excited  Sherley's 
sixteenth-century  imagination  that  nothing  would  do 
but  he  must  go  there  himself.  To  that  end  he  gave  out 
that  Essex  had  sent  him  to  make  an  alliance  with  the 
Shah  against  the  Turks.  And  in  1599  he  embarked  at 
Venice  with  his  younger  brother  Robert  and  some  twenty- 
five  English  companions,  together  with  an  interpreter  he 
had  picked  up  in  Venice,  "a  great  traveller  newly  come 
from  the  Sophy's  court,  whose  name  was  Angelo,  born  in 
Turkey,  but  a  good  Christian,  who  had  travelled  sixteen 

50 


KAZVIN 

years,  and  did  speak  twenty-four  kinds  of  languages." 
I  know  those  good  Christians ! 

Of  the  many  strange  things  which  befell  this  self- 
appointed  embassy  I  cannot  begin  to  speak.  They  were 
shipwrecked  and  shanghaied.  They  were  robbed  and 
imprisoned.  They  made  the  acquaintance  of  "a  cer- 
tain kind  of  drink  which  they  call  coffee:  it  is  made  of  an 
Italian  seed;  they  drink  it  extreme  hot;  it  is  nothing  tooth- 
some, nor  hath  any  good  smell,  but  it  is  very  wholesome." 
They  borrowed  goodly  sums  from  the  factors  of  the  Levant 
Company  in  Constantinople  and  Aleppo  and  from  a 
Florentine  in  "  Babylon,"  as  our  forefathers  called  Bagh- 
dad. Then  passing  through  "Curdia,  a  very  thievish 
and  brutish  countrie,"  they  at  last  arrived  in  Kazvin. 
Abbas  happened  to  be  away  on  some  military  expedition, 
but  Sherley  was  handsomely  received  by  "the  Lord  Stew- 
ard" and  offered,  in  the  manner  of  the  time,  £20  a  day 
for  his  maintenance.  When  this  sum  was  first  brought 
him,  Sherley  magnificently  pushed  it  aside  with  his  foot, 
saying:  "  Know  this,  brave  Persian,  I  come  not  a-begging 
to  the  King,  but  hearing  of  his  great  favour  and  worthi- 
ness, thought  I  could  not  spend  my  time  better  than  come 
to  see  him,  and  kiss  his  hand,  with  the  adventure  of  my 
body  to  second  him  in  his  princely  wars."  Which  did 
not  prevent  brave  Anthony  from  later  accepting  from  the 
Shah  all  manner  of  splendid  gifts,  including  "very  faire 
crewel  carpets." 

When  Abbas  returned  to  Kazvin,  Sherley  and  his  com- 
pany went  out  to  meet  him,  as  the  Persian  custom  is: 
"First,  Sir  Anthony  himself  in  rich  cloth  of  gold,  his 
gown  and  his  undercoat;  his  sword  hanging  on  a  rich 
scarf  to  the  worth  of  a  thousand  pounds,  being  set  with 


PERSIAN  MINIATURES 

pearl  and  diamonds;  and  on  his  head  a  tulipant  accord- 
ing/'— i.  e.  a  turban — "to  the  worth  of  two  hundred 
pounds,  his  boots  embroidered  with  pearl  and  rubies; 
his  brother  Mr.  Robert  Sherley,  likewise  in  cloth  of  gold, 
his  gown  and  his  undercoat,  with  a  rich  tulipant  on  his 
head;  his  interpreter,  Angelo,  in  cloth  of  silver,  gown  and 
undercoat;  four  in  cloth  of  silver  gowns,  with  undercoats 
of  silk  damask;  four  in  crimson  velvet  gowns,  with  damask 
undercoats;  four  in  blue  damask  gowns,  with  taffety 
undercoats;  four  in  yellow  damask,  with  their  undercoats 
of  a  Persian  stuff;  his  page  in  cloth  of  gold;  his  four  foot- 
men in  carnation  taffety."  Was  not  that  a  sight  to  see? 
There  was  likewise  something  to  see  when  Abbas  made  his 
state  entry,  preceded  by  twelve  hundred  men  bearing 
human  heads  on  the  points  of  their  pikes.  Some  also 
wore  necklaces  of  ears,  while  others  played  on  trumpets 
two  and  a  half  yards  long.  And  the  Shah  lost  no  time  in 
showing  his  English  visitors  their  first  game  of  Polo — 
played,  I  believe,  on  the  esplanade.  Sir  Stanley  Maude's 
officers  perhaps  lost  as  little  time  after  their  triumphal 
entry  into  Baghdad  in  playing  a  Polo  match;  but  a  ground 
for  this  old  Persian  game  was  first  laid  out  there  by  the 
Caliph  Harun  al  Rashid  in  the  eighth  century. 

Sir  Anthony  was  well  born,  and  he  must  have  been  well 
made  and  well  spoken,  to  have  induced  so  many  of  the 
great  of  the  earth  to  lend  him  money  and  send  him  on 
wild  goose  chases.  Abbas  was  apparently  enchanted  with 
him.  He  gave  him  a  written  charter  granting  all  Chris- 
tian merchants  in  perpetuity  the  right  to  trade  in  Persia, 
together  with  freedom  from  customs  and  religious  liberty. 
And  five  months  after  his  arrival  Sherley  got  himself 
sent  back  to  Europe  on  an  embassy  from  the  Shah,  ap- 

52 


KAZVIN 

pointed  to  treat  concerning  that  famous  alliance  against 
the  Turks.  In  Moscow,  where  Sherley  went  first,  he  was 
badly  received  by  Boris  Godunov.  But  this  is  not  the 
place  to  recount  the  long  story  of  his  other  adventures. 
For  I  regret  to  state  that  he  never  returned  to  Persia  or 
sent  the  Shah  any  report  of  his  embassy.  This  was  per- 
haps because  he  had  been  disavowed  at  home,  where  he 
never  returned  either.  He  continued  to  wander  around 
Europe  in  pursuit  of  patrons  and  grandiose  schemes  against 
the  Turks  until,  poor,  garrulous,  conceited,  and  discredited, 
he  died  in  Spain  in  1635. 

When  Sir  Anthony  went  away  on  his  mission  for  Abbas 
the  Great,  he  left  his  younger  brother  Robert  behind  him 
as  a  hostage,  Abbas  promising  "that  he  would  use  him 
as  his  own  son,  and  that  he  should  never  want,  so  long 
as  he  was  king  of  Persia."  When  two  years  had  passed 
by,  and  no  word  had  come  from  the  faithless  Sir  Anthony, 
the  Shah  began  to  look  askance  at  Robert.  But  the 
young  Englishman,  then  no  more  than  twenty-two  or 
three,  proved  his  own  fidelity  by  fighting  for  the  Persians 
against  the  Turks.  For  this  service  he  was  given  a  high 
command,  and  seems  to  have  undertaken  to  reorganise 
the  army,  especially  in  the  matter  of  artillery.  Abbas 
further  showed  him  his  favour  by  renewing  the  charter  of 
religious  liberty  first  given  Sir  Anthony,  by  issuing  an 
edict  of  a  more  substantial  kind,  declaring  that  "this 
man's  bread  is  baked  for  sixty  years,"  and  by  presenting 
Sherley  with  a  Circassian  wife,  a  relative  of  one  of  his  own. 
And  in  1608  the  Shah  sent  young  Sherley  in  turn  on  an 
embassy  to  Europe,  which  was  so  much  more  successful 
than  the  other  that  Sir  Robert  turned  up  again  in  1615. 
The  Circassian  lady  accompanied  him  on  this  expedition 

53 


PERSIAN  MINIATURES 

and  both  of  them  attracted  the  greatest  attention  wher- 
ever they  went,  as  Sherley,  in  his  character  of  Persian 
envoy,  always  dressed  in  the  Persian  manner  and  only 
consented  to  remove  his  turban  in  the  presence  of  his 
own  rightful  sovereign  King  James  I.  But  he  does  not 
seem  to  have  accomplished  anything  very  definite,  even 
in  England,  where  the  Levant  merchants  objected  to  a 
mercantile  treaty  with  Persia,  on  the  ground  that  it  would 
spoil  their  profitable  Turkish  trade. 

At  the  end  of  1615  Abbas  sent  Sherley  abroad  again. 
The  most  apparent  results  of  this  second  embassy  were 
that  Sherley  and  his  wife  got  themselves  painted  in  Rome 
by  Van  Dyck.  Those  portraits  were  long  visible  at  Pet- 
worth,  and  perhaps  are  yet.  The  mission  was  brought  to 
an  end  in  1625  by  the  appearance  in  England  of  another 
ambassador  from  Abbas  Shah,  a  Persian,  who  pronounced 
Sherley  an  impostor  and  struck  him  in  the  face  when  first 
they  met.  What  in  this  cloudy  affair  militated  most 
actively  against  Sherley,  in  the  minds  of  his  countrymen, 
was  that  he  did  not  strike  back !  As  there  was  no  one  in 
England  competent  to  pass  on  the  authenticity  of  Sher- 
ley's  credentials,  and  as  he  insisted  on  his  own  good  faith, 
King  Charles  I  appointed  Sir  Dodmore  Cotton  as  envoy 
to  Abbas  Shah  and  sent  the  three  ambassadors  packing 
to  Persia — Sherley  and  the  Persian  refusing  to  travel  in 
the  same  ship.  And  when  they  arrived  in  India  in  1627 
the  latter  committed  suicide,  thereby  proving  to  his 
English  companions  that  he  dared  not  face  the  Shah  in 
their  company. 

The  Shah,  for  that  matter,  when  they  finally  found  him 
in  his  summer  palace  of  Ashraf,  north  of  the  Elburz,  con- 
firmed Cotton  in  this  opinion  by  the  friendliness  of  his 

54 


KAZVIN 

reception  of  Sherley.  But  Abbas  was  now  an  old  man, 
near  his  own  end,  and  during  the  thirteen  years  of  Sher- 
ley's  absence  the  government  had  fallen  into  the  hands 
of  favourites  unfriendly  to  the  Englishman.  When, 
therefore,  Cotton  requested  an  official  statement  with 
regard  to  Sherley's  credentials,  and  gave  them  up  to  be 
examined,  the  vizier  of  the  moment  again  accused  Sir 
Robert  of  being  an  impostor  and  refused  to  return  the 
letters,  finally  saying  that  the  Shah  had  destroyed  them 
in  a  rage.  This  second  affront  was  too  much  for  the 
unhappy  Sherley.  He  died  not  long  after  and  was 
buried  under  the  doorstep  of  his  house,  in  that  same  city 
of  Kazvin  where  he  had  been  received  with  so  much 
honour  twenty-eight  years  before.  What  is  more,  Cot- 
ton himself  died  ten  days  later.  As  for  Lady  Sherley, 
the  Circassian  whom  Van  Dyck  painted,  and  whom  an- 
other painter,  "one  lohn,  a  Dutch  man,"  robbed  with 
the  connivance  of  the  jealous  vizier,  she  retired  to  Rome. 
Thither  she  caused  her  husband's  remains  to  be  transferred 
in  1658  and  buried  in  the  church  of  Santa  Maria  della 
Scala. 

Of  these  matters  and  many  others  Sir  Thomas  Herbert, 
the  associate  and  charge  d'affaires  of  Sir  Dodmore  Cot- 
ton, has  inimitably  written  in  his  "Some  Yeeres  Travels 
into  Divers  Parts  of  Asia  and  Affrique" — a  book  which 
so  competent  an  authority  as  Lord  Curzon  calls  "by  far 
the  most  amusing  work  that  has  ever  been  published  on 
Persia."  I  suspect  that  Chardin  thought  so,  too,  and 
borrowed  more  than  one  leaf  from  it.  If  I  had  not  al- 
ready given  a  little  too  much  space  to  this  Sherleyan  inter- 
lude, I  would  like  to  follow  Chardin's  example.  As  it  is, 
I  can  only  quote  what  Herbert  says  about  Sir  Robert: 

55 


PERSIAN  MINIATURES 

"Hee  was  the  greatest  traveller  in  his  time,  and  no  man 
had  eaten  more  salt  then  he,  none  had  more  relisht  the 
mutabilities  of  Fortune.  He  had  a  heart  as  free  as  any 
man:  his  patience  was  more  Philosophicall  than  his  In- 
tellect, having  small  acquaintance  with  the  Muses:  many 
Cities  he  saw,  many  hills  climb'd  over,  and  tasted  of  many 
severall  waters;  yet  Athens,  Parnassus,  Hippocrene  were 
strangers  to  him,  his  Notion  prompted  him  to  other  em- 
ployments: by  Rodulph  the  Second  hee  was  created  a 
Palatine  of  the  Empire;  and  by  Pope  Paul  3.  an  Earle  of 
the  sacred  Pallace  of  Lateran;  from  whom  he  had  power 
to  legitimate  the  Indians;  and  from  the  Persian  Mon- 
arch had  enricht  himselfe  by  many  meriting  services: 
but  obtained  least  (as  Scipio,  Ccesar,  Belisarius,  &c.) 
when  he  best  deserved  and  most  expected  it.  Ranck  me 
with  those  that  honour  him." 

in 

As  soon  as  I  saw  the  esplanade  again,  the  Meidan-i-Shah 
as  the  Persians  call  it,  by  sunlight,  I  at  once  made  up  my 
mind — as  I  have  similarly  done  a  hundred  times  before— 
that  nothing  would  please  me  more  than  to  spend  the 
rest  of  my  days  in  Kazvin.  Other  esplanades,  to  be  sure, 
may  be  carried  out  with  a  more  grandiose  perfection  of 
detail.  Yet  it  had  never  before  been  given  me  to  behold 
an  esplanade  where  strings  of  camels  marched,  perfectly 
at  home,  between  yellowing  plane  trees,  or  under  loggias 
with  quite  such  an  accent  of  slenderness  and  height. 
And  the  monumental  triple  white  gateway  at  the  farther 
end  was  really  perfect  of  its  kind.  This  Ali  Kapu  or 
Sublime  Porte  of  Kazvin  is  all  that  remains  of  the  old 
palace  of  the  Safevis,  which  Chardin  says  was  built  by 


KAZVIN 

Tahmasp  Shah  on  the  plans  of  a  Turkish  architect,  and 
enlarged  by  Abbas  the  Great.  The  doorway  stands  in  a 
square  white  frame,  taller  than  the  wings  on  either  side, 
recessed  in  a  pointed  arch  and  set  off  with  a  little  blue 
tiling.  No  wonder  George  Manwaring,  one  of  Sir  An- 
thony Sherley's  company,  thought  those  tiles  more  pre- 
cious than  they  are,  and  described  them  as  "rich  stones  very 
bright,  the  like  I  think  the  world  cannot  affoord!"  What 
gives  its  particular  air,  however,  is  the  stalactite  groining 
of  the  recess,  and  a  pointed  window  over  the  door,  filled 
with  an  intricate  grille  of  plaster.  And  on  either  side  of 
it  are  two  smaller  arches,  set  one  above  the  other,  the  lower 
a  plain  white  ogive,  the  upper  a  larger  ogive  of  stalactites, 
forming  a  railed  balcony  or  loggia,  in  the  back  of  which  a 
door  corresponds  to  the  great  window  of  the  central  arch. 
Seen  in  its  perspective  of  plane  trees,  with  the  standard 
of  the  Lion  and  the  Sun  floating  above  it,  the  gateway  pro- 
duces an  indescribable  effect  of  strangeness  and  dignity. 
Over  the  door,  according  to  Chardin,  is  written:  "May 
this  triumphant  gate  be  always  open  to  good  fortune, 
by  virtue  of  the  confession  we  make,  that  there  is  no  god 
but  God."  It  opens,  now,  upon  the  headquarters  of  the 
Swedish  gendarmerie! 

There  were  other  doorways  to  be  seen  in  the  esplanade, 
behind  the  trees,  decorated  with  bricks  and  tiles  in  an 
interesting  way.  And  I  was  struck  by  a  stone  head 
stuck  in  the  upper  cornice  of  a  house,  set  off  by  a  pair  of 
horns.  But  what  presently  began  to  intrigue  me  beyond 
endurance  was  a  green  dome  I  could  see  above  the  house 
tops,  while  farther  away  were  the  tops  of  two  blue  min- 
arets. I  therefore  set  out  in  the  southwesterly  direction 
in  which  I  saw  them,  and  very  soon  lost  myself  in  a  maze 

57 


PERSIAN  MINIATURES 

of  silent  streets  whose  mud  walls  were  too  high  and 
too  close  together  for  me  to  catch  sight  again  of  that 
tantalising  green  dome.  I  did  discover,  however,  any 
number  of  admirable  doorways,  recessed  in  pointed 
arches  of  brick  and  set  about  with  coloured  tiles — gener- 
ally very  bad  ones,  truth  compels  me  to  add.  The  doors 
themselves  were  low  and  heavy,  adorned  with  a  fan- 
tastic variety  of  knobs,  clamps,  locks,  and  knockers.  1 
also  passed  several  dark  arches  from  which  steps  or  in- 
clined planes  led  down  into  the  bowels  of  the  earth; 
and  out  of  them  men  staggered  with  dripping  goatskins 
of  water.  Some  of  these  arches  were  very  decorative 
indeed  with  tiles  and  stalactite  vaulting,  and  perhaps 
an  inscription  of  tile,  or  cut  in  pale  stone,  set  above 
them. 

And  I  did  come  at  last  upon  those  two  blue  minarets. 
They  were  not  true  minarets,  being  little  turrets  with  a 
covered  loggia  at  the  top;  for  the  Persian  muezzins,  un- 
like their  Turkish  cousins,  call  to  prayer  from  the  roofs 
of  their  mosques.  This  mosque  lay  so  successfully  hidden 
behind  ruinous  mud  walls  that  I  could  catch  only  a 
glimpse  of  it  from  the  rear.  But  that  was  where  its  great 
blue  dome  was  best  to  be  seen,  crowned  by  a  second  tiny 
dome,  set  like  a  closed  bud  on  the  stalk  of  a  high  drum. 
This  must  have  been  one  of  the  domes  that  caught  my 
eye  from  the  plain.  What  I  had  not  distinguished  then 
was  that  among  its  turquoise  tiles  were  set  smaller  green 
and  yellow  ones,  making  a  spiral  pattern  that  waved  up 
from  a  richly  decorated  base.  I  would  have  liked  to  think 
that  this  was  the  masjid-i-juma  which  Harun  al  Rashid 
left  Baghdad  long  enough  to  build.  None  of  the  books 
I  have  read  about  Kazvin,  however,  give  me  much  en- 

58 


KAZVIN 

couragement  for  thinking  so — or  even  that  it  was  the 
masjid-i-shab  begun  by  Ismail  Shah,  finished  by  Tah- 
masp,  and  restored  by  Agha  Mohammed  and  Fat'h  AH 
Shah,  founders  of  the  reigning  Kajar  dynasty.  These 
books  of  travel  are  all  very  well;  but  their  writers  rarely 
stay  long  enough  in  one  place,  or  know  enough  of  the 
language,  to  be  satisfactory ! 

The  other  blue  dome  I  finally  found  fronting  a  great 
space  of  sun  on  the  south  side  of  the  town.  It  belonged, 
the  dome,  to  a  structure  which  I  do  not  too  confidently 
name;  for  so  recent  and  magnificently  published  an  au- 
thority as  M.  Henri  Rene  d'Allemagne  identifies  it,  as  I 
make  out,  with  the  masjid-i-skal).  Whereas  a  passerby 
of  whom  I  stammered  inquiry  in  the  matter  made  some 
reply  about  Prince  Hosein.  And  in  fact  there  is  in  Kazvin 
an  Imamzadeh  Hosein,  the  tomb  of  a  two-year-old  son 
of  the  Imam  Riza  whose  mausoleum  in  Meshed  is  the 
most  sacred  place  in  Persia.  That  this  building  was  a 
tomb  rather  than  a  mosque  seemed  further  to  be  indicated 
by  the  circumstance  that  the  open  space  in  front  of  it 
was  a  cemetery.  The  ground  was  all  strewn  with  flat 
and  faintly  sculptured  stones,  like  that,  with  no  rail  or 
tree  to  guard  them.  On  the  side  facing  the  great  mauso- 
leum were  two  lesser  ones,  as  I  judged — low,  flat-roofed 
structures  with  pointed  brick  domes  too  small  for  them, 
their  facades  brilliantly  tiled  and  containing  ogival  win- 
dows darkly  screened  by  grilles  in  a  wheel  design  of 
weathered  wood.  And  besides  the  mausoleum,  in  the 
crenellated  mud  wall  of  the  city,  was  another  tiled  gate- 
way, like  the  one  by  which  we  had  entered  the  night 
before.  I  went  out  of  it  for  a  glance  at  the  rear  of  the 
mausoleum.  It  was  broken,  I  found,  by  five  deep  white 

59 


PERSIAN  MINIATURES 

pointed  recesses  of  stalactites,  each  looking  at  a  different 
angle  across  the  plain. 

But  I  have  not  spoken  of  the  facade,  which  consisted  of 
three  great  tiled  arches,  the  ogival  recess  in  the  centre 
being  higher  than  the  other  two,  surmounted  by  six  tiled 
pinnacles.  And  behind  them  rose  the  pointed  dome,  of 
that  form  made  familiar  to  all  the  world  by  the  pictures  of 
the  Taj  Mahal,  blue  as  a  turquoise  and  lightly  decorated 
like  the  dome  of  my  nameless  mosque  with  waving  spirals 
of  green.  What  lay  between  I  do  not  know.  I  had  been 
warned  not  to  pass  the  portal.  The  Persians,  while  less 
strict  than  the  Turks  in  many  respects,  are  more  strict 
in  not  allowing  Christians  to  defile  their  holy  places.  So 
I  stood  outside  in  the  sun  and  thought  I  had  never  seen 
anything  quite  so  jewel-like.  If  I  had  known  the  splen- 
dours of  Cairo  and  Isfahan  I  might  have  been  less  moved. 
I  remembered,  too,  that  Pisa  has  something  to  show  in  the 
way  of  a  sunlit  place  by  a  city  wall.  But  in  their  dusty 
place  without  trees,  in  their  tawny  setting,  in  their  un- 
tempered  light,  those  tiles  were  like  some  fabulous  and 
forbidden  efflorescence  of  that  lion-coloured  land. 

The  Sah'b  and  the  Khanum — may  their  shadows  never 
grow  less! — chided  me  not  for  my  long  absence.  They 
even  allowed  me  to  loiter  in  that  inviting  street  by  which 
we  had  entered  Kazvin  while  they  acquired  pistachio 
nuts,  which  are  one  of  the  specialties  of  the  town,  together 
with  other  things  good  to  munch  out  of  a  bag  while  one 
sits  in  a  berline  and  post-houses  are  far  away.  In  the 
daytime,  it  is  true,  that  street  took  on  a  semi-European- 
ized  aspect  from  its  Russian  and  Armenian  signs.  The 
Sah'b,  being  a  man  of  tongues,  even  encountered  a  cast- 
away Greek,  who  first  nearly  died  of  joy  at  the  unaccus- 

60 


KAZVIN 

tomed  sound  of  his  own  language  and  then  was  ready 
to  die  of  despair  because  the  Sah'b  had  no  time  to  gossip 
over  a  glass  of  mastic.  There  were  also  big  Cossacks 
doing  police  duty,  armed  with  bayonet  and  sabre.  How- 
ever, Kazvin  will  still  take  a  deal  of  Russianising,  as  I 
saw  for  myself  in  the  pot-shops  I  looked  into,  the  sweet 
shops  of  unimaginable  dainties,  the  glittering  copper 
shops,  the  smithies  full  of  the  acrid  smell  of  a  forge.  I 
poked  my  inquisitive  nose,  too,  into  more  than  one  arch- 
way, coming  once  upon  a  circle  of  camels  chewing  the 
cud  of  bitterness  in  a  galleried  court,  and  again  upon  a 
novel  process  of  rope-making,  carried  on  between  two 
wheeled  contraptions  in  a  bigger  court  of  trees.  What  I 
liked  best  about  that  discovery,  though,  was  the  great 
tiled  doorway  at  the  farther  end,  and  the  ultimate  pointed 
window  whose  grille  let  a  little  dusty  light  into  the  inter- 
mediate darkness. 

I  was  not  the  one  to  complain  when,  in  the  berline  again, 
we  locked  wheels  with  a  gharry  and  had  to  be  extricated 
by  a  Cossack  as  polite  as  he  was  tall.  However,  there  is 
an  end  to  all  things.  All  too  soon  the  Cossack,  who  was 
a  little  less  polite  to  the  driver  of  the  gharry  than  he  was 
to  us,  took  away  our  last  excuse  for  remaining  in  Kazvin," 
and  we  clattered  out  of  the  porcelain  city  gate. 


61 


IV 
THE  COUNTRY  OF  THE  SKY 

A  journey  is  a  portion  of  hell. 

— ARABIC  PROVERB 

Hey  diddle,  diddle,  my  son  Join  ! 
One  shoe  off  and  one  shoe  on  ! 

— MOTHER  GOOSE 

FROM  the  Resht  road  we  branched  off  through  a 
suburb  of  adobe  walls  and  fruit  trees  not  yet 
bare,  across  a  dry  gully  like  a  Sicilian  fiumara, 
past  the  scalloped  mud  battlements  that  looked 
as  if  Kazvin  lay  in  no  great  fear  of  enemies,  away  from 
the  two  turquoise  domes  glittering  behind  them,  into 
the  empty  plain.     It  slanted  up  a  little  toward  a  company 
of  hillocks  that  huddled  under  a  far  white  semicircle  of 
mountains  to  the  southwest.      As  we  made  for  them  a 
shrewish  wind  that  is  a  specialty  of  this  plateau  caught 
us  in  the  back,  nipping  the  Indian  Summer  softness  out 
of  the  air  and  reminding  us,  like  those  sharp  snowpeaks, 
that  winter  was  at  hand.     The  mule  trains  we  met  were 
another  reminder,  for  every  pack  animal  carried  a  snow 
shovel  or  two. 

For  the  rest,  there  was  much  less  to  see  than  during 
the  first  half  of  our  journey.  The  traffic  of  the  Russian 
road  divides  after  it  gets  through  the  Elburz  passes,  and 
the  caravans  bound  for  Hamadan  or  Baghdad  often  find 

62 


THE  COUNTRY  OF  THE  SKY 

the  open  plains  easier  going,  or  a  shorter  cut,  besides 
being  free  of  tolls.  So  we  had  the  country  pretty  much 
to  ourselves.  Once  or  twice  we  passed  a  flat  mud  village 
crouching  like  Kazvin  behind  buttressed  and  crenellated 
adobe  walls,  but  with  no  porcelain  gates,  alas,  and  no 
blue  domes  to  catch  an  expectant  eye.  Otherwise  the 
solitude  was  unbroken  save  by  the  paler  streak  of  the 
road  scarring  the  tawny  wastes.  Our  chief  distraction 
consisted  in  watching  the  camel-thorn — small,  prickly 
brown  balls  of  bushes  that  the  Elburz  wind  would  uproot 
and  send  spinning  off  across  the  table  of  the  plain,  one 
after  another,  as  if  in  some  mysterious  game. 

The  post-houses,  too,  were  farther  apart  than  they  had 
been.  They  were  also  more  uniform  and  a  little  more 
ornate,  being  solidly  built  of  yellow  brick.  The  name  of 
each  one  was  posted  over  the  door  in  Persian,  Russian, 
and  French.  The  sight  of  those  Arabic,  Slavic,  and 
Latin  letters  keeping  each  other  company  in  this  Persian 
loneliness  let  loose  in  one's  head  all  manner  of  rumina- 
tions, that  went  spinning  even  farther  than  the  camel- 
thorn,  though  I  fear  to  no  more  definite  end.  The  ber- 
line,  for  its  part,  lumbered  on  to  the  end  of  the  plateau, 
where  huddled  the  bald  brown  hills  for  which  we  had  been 
steering  throughout  an  entire  watch.  We  threaded  a 
corner  of  this  archipelago  without  much  perceptible 
climbing,  and  came  out  into  another  solitary  space  of 
sun.  Upon  the  white  western  wall  thereof  I  gazed,  like  a 
true  tourist,  with  the  more  respect  when  I  heard  that  it 
was  the  outer  rampart  of  Kurdistan.  As  for  us  we  bore 
southward,  changing  horses  the  second  time  toward  dusk, 
at  Nehavend.  No  trouble  about  asps  now,  on  this  less- 
frequented  road,  with  the  post  safely  out  of  the  way! 

63 


PERSIAN  MINIATURES 

But  the  sun  made  us  no  ceremonies  to-night.  He  did  not 
retire  slowly,  graciously,  with  the  lingering  farewell  smile 
of  yesterday.  He  abruptly  disappeared,  from  one  mo- 
ment to  another,  as  if  slamming  the  door  of  the  west  be- 
hind him  upon  a  land  as  bleak  and  barren  as  the  dark  o' 
the  moon.  And  in  the  cheerless  twilight  we  seesawed  up 
and  down  toward  a  ghostlike  barrier  that  towered  between 
us  and  the  south. 

About  nine  o'clock  we  reached  a  chilly  place  of  the  com- 
forting name  of  Ab-i-Germ,  or  Hot  Water — from  cer- 
tain mineral  springs  that  are  a  place  of  resort  for  rheumatic 
Persians.  The  post-house  looked  very  cosy,  too,  with  its 
lights  and  gay  rugs.  But  the  naib,  deceitful  man,  had 
no  hot  water  at  all.  Which  was  so  reprehensible  in  a 
naib  living  at  Ab-i-Germ  that  we  refused  to  wait  till  he 
lighted  a  fire  and  put  his  kettle  on,  telling  him  to  tele- 
phone ahead  to  the  next  station  to  have  a  samovar  ready 
for  us.  So  it  was  midnight  before  we  tumbled  out  at 
Aveh,  very  cold  and  sleepy,  for  a  belated  tea.  After  that 
we  seriously  began  to  climb  again,  up  and  up  between 
spectral  heights,  in  the  hearing  of  invisible  water,  to- 
ward snapping  stars.  There  even  began  to  be  a  pallor 
of  snow  beside  us,  so  that  my  companions  speculated  a 
little  as  to  what  might  happen  at  the  top  of  Sultan  Bulagh 
pass.  They  knew  it  of  old,  having  once  or  twice  stuck 
there  in  a  drift.  And  they  told  me  that  the  post  is  some- 
times held  up  there  for  weeks  at  a  time.  For  the  top  of 
that  pass  is  not  far  from  10,000  feet  above  the  Caspian. 
But  what  happened  was  that  I,  who  had  never  soared  so 
near  the  other  world,  and  who  might  not  have  been  in 
the  best  condition  after  three  days  of  almost  continuous 
jouncing  in  an  antique  berime,  disgraced  myself  by  falling 


THE  COUNTRY  OF  THE  SKY 

faint  and  having  to  be  laid  out  in  the  snow  beside  the 
road  with  the  Sah'b's  pocket  flask.  And  the  rest  of  the 
night  1  filled  the  berline  with  ignoble  snores,  all  uncon- 
scious of  the  wild  shapes  and  astounding  stars  of  that 
country  of  the  sky. 

It  was  upon  a  new  heaven  and  a  new  earth  that  I  opened 
my  eyes  next  morning,  when  we  drew  up  at  the  second 
station  south  of  the  pass.  Sirab  was  the  name  of  that 
post-house,  which  1  believe  means  Mirage.  Being  some- 
what subject  to  mirages  myself,  it  may  have  been  my 
imagination  that  added  a  purity  to  the  air,  deepened  the 
blue  of  the  fleckless  sky,  warmed  the  long-broken  slope 
in  front  of  us  with  a  secret  gold.  But  this  land  was 
certainly  much  nearer  heaven  than  the  one  we  had  left, 
and  considerably  farther  south — about  as  far  as  Gibraltar 
or  Cape  Hatteras.  And  it  is  not  every  day  that  one  sees 
for  the  first  time  the  sun  of  the  Fire  Worshippers  rise 
over  the  rim  of  the  Persian  desert.  However,  as  I  took 
in  this  not  altogether  objective  phenomenon  1  could  make 
out  that  it  was  related  to  the  brusque  sunset  of  the  even- 
ing before.  The  sky  brightened,  palpitated;  the  edge  of 
the  desert  suddenly  flashed  into  incandescence;  the  in- 
candescence boiled  and  grew  tumid  till  a  bubble  of  intol- 
erable gold  surged  clear  of  the  plain :  no  moods,  no  glam- 
ours, none  of  that  self-conscious  inflammation  of  nature 
which  attends  the  breaking  or  the  fading  of  the  light  in 
more  temperamental  climates.  It  was  like  the  solution 
of  a  problem  by  an  intellectual  mind,  rather  than  any 
inspiration  of  romance  or  despair.  And  the  look  of  the 
country  contributed  to  this  effect,  with  its  long,  simple, 
abstract  lines,  of  a  beauty  entirely  different  from  that  of  a 
land  of  trees. 

65 


PERSIAN  MINIATURES 

When  I  set  about  assisting  at  this  spectacle  more  fully 
than  was  possible  inside  a  closed  landau,  and  to  that  end 
hunted  for  my  shoes,  I  could  find  no  more  than  one  of 
them.  Nor  could  anybody  else.  Whereat  the  dread 
truth  burst  upon  me  that  the  other  must  have  fallen  out 
by  the  wayside,  who  knew  how  many  parasangs  back, 
during  my  humiliating  performances  on  top  of  the  pass. 

"Look  here,"  I  asked  the  Sah'b;  "When  shall  I  see 
my  trunks  again?" 

"Oh,  in  about  two  months,"  answered  the  Sah'b 
pleasantly — "if  they  don't  get  stuck  in  the  snow." 

"Can  one  buy  shoes  in  Hamadan?"  pursued  I  darkly. 

"Very  nice  ones,"  he  replied — "red,  yellow,  purple, 
even  bright  green,  and  curly  about  the  toes." 

"The  devil!"  I  burst  out,  very  inappropriately  for  the 
holy  Sabbath.  "I've  got  nothing  with  me  but  a  pair  of 
patent  leather  pumps!" 

"Never  mind,"  the  Khanum  consoled  me.  "I'll  lend 
you  those  new  arctics  I  bought  in  Baku." 

Such  is  Persia !  However,  I  soon  forgot  my  sorrows  in 
another  aspect  of  Persia  that  presented  itself  to  our  view 
as  we  rattled  merrily  southward  under  the  mounting 
sun.  This  was  a  succession  of  block-houses,  square  mud 
towers  with  loop-holed  roofs,  each  one  standing  in  sight 
of  the  next  and  somehow  giving,  in  spite  of  the  telephone 
wires  sagging  between  them,  the  distinctest  of  impres- 
sions that  we  had  contrived  to  drop  back  from  the  twen- 
tieth century  into  the  thirteenth.  Out  of  a  loop-hole 
would  be  sticking  a  rifle  or  a  Russian-looking  lamb's- 
wool  cap — belonging,  nevertheless,  to  a  Persian  gendarme 
who  does  his  best  to  discredit  Morier's  famous  quotation: 
"O  Allah,  Allah,  if  there  was  no  dying  in  the  case,  how 

66 


THE  COUNTRY  OF  THE  SKY 

the  Persians  would  fight!"  It  was  to  assist  in  this  worthy 
endeavour  that  my  monocled  Swedish  friend  had  travelled 
down  the  Black  Sea  in  my  steamer  chair.  I  ought  to 
have  been  the  more  willing  to  lend  it  to  him  because  my 
fellow-countryman  Mr.  Shuster  had  been  the  occasion  of 
his  going  out  to  Persia.  And  that  he  might  find  some- 
thing to  do  the  Sah'b  made  the  clearer  to  me  by  pointing 
out  a  line  of  low  hills  at  our  right  and  telling  me  about  a 
Robin  Hood  of  the  region,  named  after  the  uncle  of  the 
Prophet,  Abbas,  who  not  so  many  months  before  had 
pounced  out  of  those  hills  upon  a  messenger  of  the  Im- 
perial Bank  of  Persia,  relieving  him  of  the  tidy  sum  of 
17,000  tomans. 

After  that  I  regarded  block-houses,  loop-holes,  and  the 
trim  blue  gendarmes  we  met  patrolling  the  road,  with 
more  interest  than  ever,  to  say  nothing  of  the  barren 
landscape  around  them.  But  nothing  more  startling 
did  we  see  than  certain  great  patches  of  blinding  white 
in  the  ruddy  dun  colour  of  the  plains,  which  gave  one  an 
excellent  idea  of  what  a  salt  desert  must  look  like.  Indeed 
the  greater  part  of  the  country  was  no  better  than  a  des- 
ert, without  a  house,  a  tree,  or  a  stream  to  see.  What 
began  to  grow  more  and  more  visible  in  front  of  us  was  a 
tall,  toothed  silver  mountain.  And  that,  I  learned,  was 
Mt.  Elvend,  guardian  of  Hamadan  and  neighbour  of 
that  new  house  toward  which  we  had  been  hurrying. 

Of  Hamadan  itself,  however,  there  was  as  yet  no  sign. 
Nor  was  there  any  till  after  we  had  passed,  at  noon,  the 
last  post  station  of  Ag  Bulagh.  Then  I  discovered  a 
peasant  or  two  driving  across  the  desert  on  a  log  of  wood, 
harnessed  to  a  minute  ox.  Although  I  was  not  a  little 
astonished  to  find  out  that  the  peasant  was  harrowing  a 


PERSIAN  MINIATURES 

field,  I  was  still  more  astonished  to  note  that  the  ox  had 
no  hump.  Those  Indian-looking  cattle  all  belong  to 
the  north  side  of  Elburz — unless  there  be  more  of  them  in 
the  extreme  east  and  south  of  Persia.  We  also  began  to 
encounter  tea  houses  once  more,  cubical  ones  of  pinky- 
yellow  mud,  whose  clients  seemed  not  so  busy  sipping 
the  glass  that  cheers  as  pursuing  that  more  intimate  occu- 
pation which  the  Khanum  dignified  with  the  title  of 
The  Chase.  He  that  hath  ears  to  hear,  let  him  hear!  I 
have  witnessed  The  Chase  in  the  land  where  the  citron 
blooms,  but  never  have  I  seen  it  so  popular,  so  passion- 
ate, or  followed  with  so  little  false  modesty,  as  in  Persia. 
A  village  or  two  from  which  these  huntsmen  came  were 
visible  in  the  distance,  too  much  the  colour  of  the  country 
to  be  very  conspicuous,  but  marked  by  prickly  planta- 
tions of  poplars.  And  two  huntsmen  of  a  more  pictur- 
esque sort  kept  us  company  for  part  of  the  way  into 
town.  One  of  them  was  a  swarthy  young  man  on  a 
fiery  stallion,  who  looked  as  if  he  might  very  well  be  a 
native  of  that  village  the  Sah'b  told  me  about,  not  far 
away,  the  inhabitants  whereof,  until  discouraged  by  the 
gendarmes,  used  to  make  a  handsome  living  by  standing 
on  a  certain  bridge  of  the  Russian  road  and  turning  out 
the  pockets  of  travellers.  Every  now  and  then  he  would 
dart  off  across  the  fields,  standing  in  his  stirrups  and 
aiming  his  gun  behind  him  as  if  to  prove  that  the  tradition 
of  the  Parthian  shot  is  not  yet  dead  in  Persia.  Upon  the 
Sah'b  asking  him  what  he  would  take  for  his  horse,  he 
replied  magnificently:  "It  is  yours" — and  galloped  off 
again.  His  older  companion  rode  a  sorrier  steed,  his 
legs  thrust  into  a  couple  of  saddlebags.  But  such  saddle- 
bags, woven  in  the  manner  of  fine  rugs ! 

68 


THE  COUNTRY  OF  THE  SKY 

This  part  of  the  tilted  plateau  was  much  broken  by 
hillocks,  some  of  them  so  small  and  so  regular  in  shape 
that  they  had  rather  the  air  of  the  tumuli  of  Thrace. 
They  rather  tempted  one,  too,  to  remember  that  Persians 
had  passed  through  that  corner  of  the  world,  and  Greeks 
through  this — until  they  suddenly  parted,  to  let  us  down 
into  a  wide  dip  beyond.  But  what  they  really  did  was 
to  treat  me,  for  one,  to  that  rare  enough  experience,  a 
sensation.  For  the  farther  slope  of  the  broad  hollow  into 
which  we  began  to  coast  ended  in  the  snow  of  Elvend, 
seven  thousand  feet  above  our  heads,  though  nearly 
thirteen  thousand  feet  in  the  Persian  blue.  The  toothed 
range  that  wore  the  snow  was  of  a  ruddy  purple  in  the 
brilliant  afternoon  light,  curving  nobly  south  and  east  in 
a  great  amphitheatre  about  more  of  a  forest  than  I  had 
seen  since  turning  the  corner  of  Jamshidabad.  The  trees 
of  this  forest  were  prevalently  poplars,  slim  and  bare  as 
masts.  And  between  them  looked  out  tier  on  tier  of 
flat  adobe  roofs,  honey-coloured  in  the  St.  Martin's 
sun,  not  unsuggestive  indeed  of  a  wild  honeycomb.  Or 
it  might  be  a  wasps'  nest,  plastered  on  the  lower  but- 
tresses of  Elvend.  Who  knew?  I  had  heard  many 
savage  things  spoken  of  Hamadan.  Nor  was  there  any 
sign  of  turquoise  domes.  But  if  a  town  is  capable  of 
perching  itself  in  such  an  amphitheatre  as  that,  thought 
I,  it  can  very  well  do  without  turquoise  domes. 

Traffic  multiplied  as  we  trotted  on.  Mud  walls  and 
orchards,  nakeder  than  those  of  Kazvin,  began  to  border 
the  road.  Presently  four  demure  young  men  in  long  black 
coats  and  short  black  caps  waylaid  the  loerline  and  prof- 
ferred  the  Sah'b  and  the  Khanum  an  eloquent  Oriental 
welcome  in  a  French  of  surprising  fluency.  Then  a 

69 


PERSIAN  MINIATURES 

cavalcade  of  three  nice-looking  young  Europeans,  an 
Englishman,  a  Frenchman,  and  a  Swiss,  followed  by  three 
Persian  grooms,  cantered  up  to  meet  us.  No:  I  made  up 
my  mind  then  and  there  that  Hamadan  was  not  a  wasps' 
nest!  Thus  attended  we  splashed  through  a  shallow 
stream,  lurched  uphill  into  tipsy  alleys  of  mud  hovels— 
where  I  noticed  one  or  two  built-in  bits  of  Saracenic- 
looking  sculpture.  At  last,  having  mounted  a  half  moon 
to  the  top  of  the  town,  we  drove  down  a  lane  between  a 
high  adobe  wall  and  a  willow-bordered  field,  passed  a 
few  tall  brick  gateways,  and  stopped  at  one  more. 

And  so,  with  one  foot  in  my  own  American  shoe  and 
one  in  a  Russian  snow-boot  of  the  Khanum's,  did  I  make 
my  entrance  into  the  hospitable  Swiss  bungalow  where 
I  spent  my  first  night  in  Hamadan. 


70 


V 
THE  BAZAAR 

Hamadan  is  my  native  place:  and  I  will  say  to  its  honour  that 
for  ugliness  it  surpasses  every  other  city  of  the  world; 

That  its  children  have  as  many  vices  as  its  old  men,  and  that 
its  old  men  have  the  judgment  of  children. 

BEDI-AL-ZAMAN  AL  HAMADANI 


THEY  tell  me  there  is  nothing  to  see  in  Hamadan. 
I  wonder!     I  can  see  for  myself  that  there 
are  neither  blue  domes  nor  porcelain  gates.     I 
have  also  made  another  discovery.     It  is  the 
more  disconcerting  because  I  have  read  in  Prof.  A.  V. 
Williams  Jackson's  "Persia  Past  and  Present"  a  poem 
by  Mr.  Clinton  Scollard,  of  which  every  stanza  returns  in 
the  last  line  to  the  walls  of  Hamadan.     It  therefore  be- 
comes my  painful  duty,  as  a  spinner  of  literal  prose,  to 
point  out  that  Hamadan  has  no  walls — at  least  on  our 
side  of  the  town.     Yet  of  private  walls  it  has  so  many, 
hiding  houses,  courts,  and  gardens  from  the  indiscreet 
curiosity  of  the  passerby,  that  I  ask  myself  if  they  can 
be  right  when  they  say  there  is  nothing  to  see  in  Ham- 
adan. 

Nevertheless,  it  amuses  me  to  go  down  town  with  the 
Sah'b.  It  is  truly  going  down  town,  for  we  live  on  the 
lower  edge  of  a  suburb  of  gardens  that  slants  from  the 


PERSIAN  MINIATURES 

mountains  to  the  city.  It  amuses  me  the  more  because 
the  rite  of  going  down  town  is  associated  in  my  mind  with 
boats,  trains,  trams,  tunnels,  and  other  devices  of  the 
West  for  cheating  time.  Whereas  in  Hamadan  time 
claims  his  full  due.  To  go  down  town,  or  to  go  to  the 
Bazaar,  as  we  say  here,  you  may  if  you  choose  mount  a 
horse.  You  may  not,  however,  call  a  carriage.  The 
streets  are  too  narrow  to  drive  in.  The  Sah'b  and  I, 
accordingly,  walk.  And  so  do  most  of  the  fifty  or  sixty 
thousand  other  Hamadanis.  If  the  results  of  this  whole- 
some exercise  be  not  very  favourable  to  the  shine  of  our 
shoes  or  the  crease  of  our  trousers,  it  at  least  gives  us  a 
better  chance  to  see  how  little  there  is  to  see. 

The  road  outside  our  gate  is  at  first  a  muddy  country 
lane,  enlivened  by  trees  and  a  miniature  brook  that  can 
never  make  up  their  minds  which  side  to  run.  Presently 
the  trees  give  it  up,  yielding  their  place  to  two  blank  mud 
walls.  As  for  the  brook,  it  decides  to  take  the  middle  of 
the  street,  ferrying  dead  leaves,  onion  peels,  and  more 
equivocal  relics  to  the  unknown  destination  to  which  it 
finally  vanishes  under  a  wall.  And  it  does  not  take  me 
long  to  make  out  that  the  charms  of  Hamadan  are  not 
for  the  nostril.  Was  that  what  the  more  initiated  poet 
whose  distich  I  have  put  at  the  head  of  this  chapter  was 
thinking  about?  Mr.  Clinton  Scollard  might  think  so, 
or  my  Belgian  lady.  Yet  it  occurs  to  me  that  such  a  per- 
son as  the  late  M.  Cezanne,  for  example,  might  note  with- 
out disfavour  the  none  too  geometric  line  in  which  that 
dirty  water  flashes  down  the  street,  the  inequalities  of 
tone  and  surface  in  the  irregular  mud  walls  on  either  side, 
the  contrast  of  their  tawniness  with  the  brilliant  strip 
of  blue  overhead.  I  can  also  imagine  a  celebrated  citi- 

72 


RAMADAN    STREET 
73 


PERSIAN  MINIATURES 

i 

zen  of  Lowell,  Massachusetts,  finding  subjects  to  etch  in 
these  crooked  perspectives,  in  the  shops  that  occasionally 
break  them  with  broad,  overshadowing  canopies  of  dried 
mud,  propped  up  on  leaning  poplar  poles;  in  the  rough 
black  arches  through  which  an  alley  will  suddenly  plunge 
out  of  sight;  in  the  flimsy  balconies  that  give  an  accent 
all  their  own  to  a  blind  mud  wall,  or  the  rare  windows 
that  pierce  it,  high  above  the  ground,  filled  with  an  infinity 
of  little  panes.  But  who,  without  glossing  or  vilifying, 
could  evoke  the  true  mud  and  cobblestones  underfoot, 
the  exact  key  of  clear  colour  overhead,  the  complicated 
variation  of  smells  about  one  strong  acrid  theme  of  burn- 
ing camel  dung? 

The  most  architectural  feature  of  these  twisting  cracks 
of  sun  and  shade  are  the  doorways.  Some  of  them,  in- 
deed, bar  the  street  itself,  shutting  off  quarter  from 
quarter  at  night  or  in  times  of  disturbance.  None  of 
them  can  compare  with  the  Sublime  Porte  of  Kazvin, 
but  all  of  them  make  a  welcome  break  in  the  monotony 
of  the  endless  mud  walls  and  most  of  them  are  more  im- 
posing than  the  common  run  of  street  doors' in  Europe  or 
America.  A  gateway,  the  Sah'b  tells  me,  is  the  index 
of  a  man's  importance  in  the  world.  And  the  humility 
of  his  own,  together  with  the  lack  of  any  yawning  under- 
ling especially  deputed  to  guard  it,  is  what  Hamadan 
finds  not  least  astonishing  about  our  new  house. 

Beside  one  low,  heavy  door,  open  upon  darkness,  quaint 
life-sized  figures  are  frescoed:  the  sign  of  a  public  bath. 
Other  signs  are  the  striped  towels  hanging  out  to  dry  in 
the  little  square  where  three  streets  come  together,  the 
bulls'  eyes  of  greenish  glass  in  the  mud  domes  of  the  roof, 
and  a  new  smell.  At  any  rate,  it  seems  that  Persian  baths, 

74 


THE  BAZAAR 

unlike  Turkish  ones,  contain  a  central  pool,  appropriately 
named  the  treasury,  and  that  the  water  of  this  treasury  is 
changed  as  seldom  as  may  be!  This  news  enables  me  to 
bear  with  better  equanimity  the  further  news  that  I 
shall  never  be  allowed  here,  as  I  have  been  in  Stambul, 
to  pollute  the  interior  of  a  bath  with  my  presence. 

The  people  we  meet  all  look  more  alike  than  the  peo- 
ple of  any  place  I  have  seen  for  a  long  time.  There  is 
little  of  the  colour  I  had  expected — save  when  a  company 
of  mosstroopers  clatters  by  on  horseback,  led  by  a  fan- 
tastic individual  in  a  tunic  of  peacock  green  velvet.  His 
saddle  is  covered  with  a  lattice-work  of  magenta  bro- 
cade on  white,  and  all  of  them  rattle  with  weapons  out  of 
a  museum.  Otherwise  everybody  dresses  very  soberly, 
the  men  oftener  than  not  in  a  loose  brown  cloak  called 
an  aba  and  a  brown  felt  auk's  egg,  the  women  swathed 
from  top  to  toe  in  a  black  or  dark  blue  clader.  It  is  im- 
possible to  tell  one  from  another  when  their  thick  white 
veils  are  down.  These  have  an  odd  triangular  effect, 
being  fastened  around  the  crown  of  their  heads,  with  a 
jewelled  clasp  at  the  back,  and  disappearing  in  front 
under  the  dark  domino.  But  I  notice  that  they  like  to 
throw  their  veils  back  when  none  of  their  own  men  are 
near.  The  consequent  revelation  of  long  black  eyes  and 
high,  pink  cheek-bones  is  not  too  upsetting!  In  fact,  the 
men  strike  me  as  handsomer  than  the  women.  There 
are  many  bare  legs  and  feet — too  many  to  be  comfortable, 
I  am  afraid,  at  6,000  feet  above  the  sea  around  Thanks- 
giving time.  Yet  one  youngster  patters  after  us  stark 
naked,  apparently  less  sorry  for  himself  than  he  would 
have  us  believe.  He  belongs  to  the  great  army  of  beggars 
that  lie  in  wait  at  strategic  corners  or  follow  one  with 

75 


PERSIAN  MINIATURES 

hand  outstretched,  making  piteous  outcries  which  are 
full  of  the  word  khoda,  God.  They  are  a  distressing  spec- 
tacle, with  their  thin  rags,  their  hideous  deformities,  their 
emaciated  babies.  However,  you  learn  the  more  will- 
ingly how  to  put  them  off  with  a  pharisaic  "God  be  your 
keeper!"  when  you  catch  one  laughing  gaily  with  her 
neighbour  and  then  bursting  into  dolorous  sobs  at  sight 
of  you. 

Finally  we  reach  the  true  boundary  of  the  Bazaar, 
which  is  {he  river.  I  am  willing  to  take  Prof.  Wil- 
liams Jackson's  word  for  it  that  this  river  is  the  Alusjird, 
though  I  never  came  across  any  one  else  who  had  so 
definite  a  name  for  it.  I  would  be  less  willing  to  accept 
the  picture  of  it  which  Prof.  Williams  Jackson  and  Col- 
onel Sykes  have  borrowed  from  an  old  French  traveller 
by  the  name  of  Eugene  Flandin  if  I  did  not  happen  to 
remember  the  Envoi  of  "The  Seven  Seas,"  how  Kipling 
says: 

"each  in  his  seperate  star 

Shall  draw  the  thing  as  he  sees  it  for  the  God  of 
things  as  they  are." 

For  myself,  I  see  that  pointed  bridge  of  brick  and  cobble- 
stones less  romantically  than  did  M.  Flandin,  in  the  year 
of  grace  1841.  I  even  have  to  confess  that  I  do  not 
see  the  white  peak  of  Elvend  quite  so  acute  or  so  aptly 
placed  with  respect  to  the  bridge  below  it.  But  I  do  see 
that  the  river  and  its  bridges  are  a  notable  feature  of 
Hamadan,  falling  away  between  boulders  and  poplars 
into  a  winding  cleft  through  the  clay-coloured  town.  And 
I  see  what  M.  Flandin  did  not,  what  perhaps  in  1841 


THE  BAZAAR 

was  not  there  to  see,  a  quaint  low  mosque  at  one  end  of 
the  bridge,  with  windows  of  heavy  wooden  lattice-work  in 
which  panes  of  white  paper  are  pasted  against  the  cold. 


ii 


Not  far  beyond  the  bridge  lies  the  Office.  I,  being 
used  to  reach  offices  by  way  of  a  lift,  find  this  Office  a 
highly  characteristic  place.  The  gateway  giving  en- 
trance thereto  is  by  no  means  so  august  as  some  others  in 
Hamadan.  Still,  it  is  a  handsome  enough  brick  arch, 
leading  into  a  dark  vaulted  vestibule.  From  the  vesti- 
bule an  inner  door  opens  at  right  angles  into  a  court 
which  no  one  would  ever  have  expected.  It  is  laid  out 
like  a  garden  with  trees,  flower  beds,  and  brick  walks. 
And  at  the  farther  end  of  it  lies  the  Office  proper.  This 
is  a  long,  low,  flat-roofed  house,  faced  with  light  buff  brick, 
whose  most  engaging  feature  is  the  lalar  in  the  centre. 

77 


PERSIAN  MINIATURES 

The  talar  is  a  great  loggia,  raised  four  or  five  feet  above 
the  ground  but  rising  itself  through  the  second  story  to 
the  roof,  the  outer  edge  of  which  it  helps  to  hold  up  by 
means  of  two  tall  and  extremely  slim  pillars  with  slender 
carved  capitals.  The  two  inner  corners  of  the  talar  are 
decorated  at  the  top  with  pendentives  of  stalactites  and 
painted  flowers  in  pale  yellow,  while  a  good  part  of  the 
rear  wall  is  one  immense  window.  The  square  lower  part 
of  the  window  is  cut  up  into  innumerable  tiny  panes, 
the  upper  part  being  an  ogival  lattice  of  weathered  wood 
like  those  I  saw  in  Kazvin.  And  on  either  side  of  the 
talar  is  one  more  such  cusped  lattice,  not  quite  so  large, 
their  intricate  dark  brown  wheels  relieving  the  yellowish 
facade  in  the  pleasantest  possible  way. 

The  Office  itself  is  entered  not  through  the  talar  but 
through  a  vestibule  on  either  side  of  it,  from  which  doors 
open  both  into  the  loggia  and  into  the  adjoining  rooms. 
After  such  an  approach,  however,  it  is  surprising  to  dis- 
cover how  like  other  offices  is  this  one.  The  chief  dif- 
ference is  in  the  black-capped  mir^as  who  sit  at  many  of 
the  desks.  A  mir^a,  I  might  add,  is  either  a  prince  or  a 
scribe,  according  as  the  title  follows  or  precedes  his  given 
name.  These  mir^as  are  not  princes.  They  are,  as  a 
matter  of  fact,  nearly  all  Jews,  though  they  dress  like 
Persians  and  speak  French  much  better  than  I.  But  the 
true  touch  of  the  country  is  a  woolly  brown  lamb  which  at 
the  psychological  moment  a  villager  known  to  the  Sah'b 
produces  from  the  folds  of  an  aba  and  presents  to  him  for 
pishkesh:  which  means  that  the  Sah'b  is  expected  in 
return  to  gratify  the  donor  with  a  gift  of  money  rather 
more  than  equal  to  the  value  of  the  lamb. 

Next  the  Office,  all  but,  is  the  Bank.    Theoretically, 

78 


THE  BAZAAR 

you  know,  banks  do  not  exist  in  the  Near  East,  since  the 
taking  of  interest  is  forbidden  by  the  Koran.  Practically, 
however,  there  is  no  part  of  the  world  where  such  ex- 
orbitant rates  of  interest  are  extorted  from  the  wretch 
who  needs  money.  And  there  are  two  foreign  institu- 
tions which  have  branches  in  all  the  chief  Persian  towns : 
the  Imperial  Bank  of  Persia,  a  British  corporation,  and 
the  Russian  Banque  d'Escompte  et  de  Prets  de  la  Perse. 
For  us,  however,  the  Bank  is  the  English  one.  Its  gate  is 
rather  more  imposing  than  that  of  the  Office.  As  for  the 
court  inside  the  gate,  it  is  smaller  and  paved  with  stone, 
albeit  watered  by  the  most  unbanklike  of  little  rivers, 
flowing  symmetrically  in  shallow  stone  channels  which 
you  cross  by  miniature  arched  bridges.  There  is  also  a 
talar.  And  beyond  the  ialar  I  find  occasion  to  be  con- 
firmed anew  in  my  idea  that  Hamadan  is  not  a  wasps' 
nest. 

They  tell  me  that  the  Persian  is  quick  as  a  Westerner 
to  learn  those  secrets  of  commercial  paper  which  to  a 
Turk,  as  to  myself,  are  dark  as  the  ways  of  Providence. 
The  game  of  exchange  is  one  that  Persians  pick  up  in  no 
time,  and  the  consequence  is  that  the  Hamadan  branch 
of  the  Imperial  Bank  of  Persia  is  rather  more  important, 
commercially,  than  its  central  office  in  Tehran.  They 
also  tell  me  amusing  stories  of  the  amenities  which  under 
the  old  regime  used  to  be  exchanged  between  this  British 
institution  and  its  Russian  rival.  The  English,  who  were 
first  in  the  field,  describe  the  latter  as  a  pawnshop,  since 
it  is  not  run  like  their  own  bank  on  a  strictly  commercial 
basis,  being  a  dependency  of  the  Russian  Ministry  of 
Finance.  The  Russians,  on  the  other  hand,  do  not  look 
kindly  upon  the  fact  that  the  English  have  a  monopoly 

79 


PERSIAN  MINIATURES 

of  banknotes  in  Persia  for  99  years — or  until  1988.  The 
trouble  with  these  notes  is  that  they  are  good  only  for 
the  town  where  they  are  issued,  being  elsewhere  subject 
to  discount.  Which  is  the  reason  why  travellers  in  Persia 
are  obliged  to  load  themselves  down  with  sacks  of  krans. 
But  if  any  branch  were  at  any  time  unable  to  redeem  its 
notes,  the  Bank  would  forfeit  its  monopoly.  So  the  Rus- 
sians used  to  collect  as  many  of  the  English  notes  as 
they  could  lay  hands  on,  suddenly  presenting  them  for 
payment  at  a  moment  when  they  had  reason  to  believe 
that  the  branch  they  chose  was  short  of  cash.  But  they 
never  quite  caught  the  English  out.  And  on  one  occasion 
the  Hamadan  branch  redeemed  so  large  a  number  of  its 
own  notes  in  so  huge  a  quantity  of  the  minutest  coins  of 
the  realm  that  the  Russians  never  repeated  the  experi- 
ment. New  light  on  the  workings  of  the  Anglo-Russian 
Agreement  of  1907! 

Quite  as  amusing,  to  my  simple  mind,  is  it  to  watch 
the  people  who  come  and  go  through  the  court.  I  am 
still  too  green  to  tell  whether  they  be  Persians  or  not, 
unless  they  show  a  certain  type  of  lean,  distinguished 
face.  Portly  Hebrews  enter  with  bags  of  shekels  such  as 
we  carried  up-country.  Natives  of  Baghdad,  known  by 
their  tight  silk  robes  and  their  drooping  fezzes,  bring  in 
the  news  of  the  Tigris.  Semi-European  Armenians  stick 
long  noses  between  the  bars  of  the  cashier's  cage.  And 
one  customer  would  make  his  fortune  at  a  costume  ball. 
His  loose  clothes  are  of  so  pale  a  blue  that  I  can't  imagine 
how  he  keeps  them  so  immaculate.  He  wears  top  boots 
with  a  curious  design  cut  into  the  upper  edge  of  them. 
Around  his  waist  is  a  bulging  figured  silk  girdle,  out  of 
which  protrude  suggestive  handles  of  ivory,  silver,  and 

80 


THE  BAZAAR 

steel  damascened  with  gold.  A  replica  of  that  girdle, 
on  a  reduced  scale,  binds  about  his  forehead  a  black  kola, 
taller  and  more  pontifical  than  I  have  yet  seen.  What  is 
more,  he  has  features  to  go  with  these  striking  accoutre- 
ments— proud,  aquiline,  so  spare  that  deep  hollows  under- 
lie his  cheek-bones,  yet  of  an  enviable  swarthy  ruddiness, 
with  one  broad,  black,  unbroken  bar  of  eyebrow  above 
two  profound  eyes  that  seem  to  meditate  anything  but 
finance. 

"Who  on  earth  is  that  magnificent  creature? "  I  de- 
mand of  the  Sah'b. 

"That?    Oh,  only  a  Kurd,"  he  replies.     "Come  on." 

in 

The  Bazaar  proper  lies  a  short  distance  down  hill  from 
the  Bank  and  the  Office,  on  the  same  side  of  the  river. 
Kmifia  guides  me  there,  walking  in  front  of  me  to  clear 
the  way.  He  makes  nothing  of  shoving  people  aside, 
and  they,  like  Prussians  on  the  same  sidewalk  with  an 
officer,  make  nothing  of  being  shoved.  That  is  how  the 
steps  of  greatness  are  smoothed  in  Persia.  For  the  rest, 
no  great  smoothness  is  perceptible  to  my  steps.  What 
pleases  me  most  about  the  streets  is  their  narrowness, 
and  the  manner  in  which  they  swerve  this  way  or  that, 
and  the  gay  chatter  of  which  they  are  full.  There  is 
something  Neapolitan  about  it,  something  at  all  events 
not  Turkish.  And  what  do  I  catch  sight  of  through  a 
gateway  but  a  dome,  the  dome  of  the  Masjid-i-Juma,  the 
mir^a  tells  me — which  is  to  say  the  dome  of  the  Friday 
mosque — and  around  the  base  of  that  dome  a  few  tur-j 
quoise  tiles?  After  all ! 

We  turn  into  a  small  square,  which  is  dark  and  damp 

81 


PERSIAN  MINIATURES 

by  reason  of  the  matting  roofing  it  over,  stretched  on 
wooden  beams.  Here  is  a  vegetable  and  meat  market, 
whose  stalls  leave  but  a  narrow  aisle  around  the  edges. 
Dried  fruits,  fresh  apples,  quinces,  oranges,  pile  the 
stands.  Bunches  of  big  white  grapes,  looking  none  too 
fresh,  hang  from  rafters.  Beyond  are  butcher  shops 
with  live  sheep  and  dead  sheep  in  them,  sheep  with  their 
fleeces  and  sheep  without  their  fleeces,  sheep  in  every 
stage  of  dismemberment,  hanging  from  hooks  or  laid  out 
on  stained  slabs  of  wood  for  the  admiration  of  the  public. 
Even  at  this  late  season  flies  not  a  few  buzz  around  them, 
which  no  one  would  ever  think  of  keeping  away  by  means 
of  any  kind  of  screen.  In  one  corner  an  old  man  squats 
in  the  mud  with  a  quantity  of  goats'  heads  lying  on  the 
ground  in  front  of  him.  Every  now  and  then  a  customer 
picks  one  up  by  a  horn,  examines  it  attentively,  and 
lays  it  back  in  the  mud.  Out  of  another  stall  comes  an- 
other old  man  carrying  a  chicken.  He  wears  a  leather 
skull  cap,  and  his  beard  is  dyed  scarlet  with  henna. 
He  catches  the  squawking  fowl  by  the  wings,  which  he 
folds  back  and  lays  in  the  mud  under  his  right  foot. 
Under  his  left  he  sets  the  creature's  legs;  and  then,  very 
deliberately,  in  the  manner  prescribed  by  the  canon,  he 
cuts  the  chicken's  throat,  the  blood  spurting  out  over  the 
muddy  cobblestones. 

We  pass  on  into  a  crooked  alley,  lined  on  both  sides  by 
little  shops.  They  are  open  in  front,  and  some  of  them 
have  counters  flush  with  the  street.  Others  have  no 
counter  at  all.  In  all  of  them  the  proprietor  sits  on  a  rug 
amid  his  wares.  Among  wares  that  catch  my  eye  are 
hanging  metal  pots  which  look  like  pewter,  though  they 
are  probably  tinned  copper.  The  biggest  and  best  ones 

82 


THE  BAZAAR 

have  Arabic  inscriptions  on  them  in  relief,  together  with 
other  decorations  of  arabesques  and  flowers.  I  also 
notice  shops  that  would  contain  enlightenment  for  the 
textile  curator  of  a  certain  American  museum,  who  once 
showed  me  a  piece  of  homespun  striped  in  soft  colours, 
with  the  interesting  information  that  the  people  of  "the 
Orient "  used  it  for  portieres  and  sofa  pillows.  I  held  my 
tongue:  but  in  this  alley  are  just  such  stuffs  for  saddle- 
cloths and  saddlebags  of  the  humbler  sort,  carried  by 
mules  and  donkeys  in  pack  trains.  There  are  also  white 
saddlebags  elaborately  embroidered  in  colours.  And  what 
would  you  say  to  a  flour  bag,  a  plain  white  canvas  sack 
of  the  sort  we  throw  away,  decorated  with  blue  flowers 
and  I  don't  know  what? 

At  last  the  alley  narrows  in  front  of  us  into  a  dark  arch- 
ray, Here  is  the  heart  of  the  Bazaar,  a  place  of  twilight 

roofed  in  from  sun,  rain,  or  snow.  I  have  seen  something 
like  it  in  Stambul  and  other  cities;  but  I  have  never  hap- 
pened to  see  horses,  donkeys,  mules,  camels  even,  so 
much  at  home  between  shops  and  men.  They  jingle  to 
and  fro  through  the  dusky  maze,  shoving  pedestrians 
aside  more  unceremoniously  than  does  the  mir^a  in  front 
of  me.  My  confused  picture  of  the  Bazaar,  however, 
only  profits  thereby.  Rugs  are  what  I  see  first,  hanging 
on  walls,  spread  out  on  counters,  piled  in  corners.  There 
are  saddlebags,  too,  of  the  kind  that  belonged  to  the  cava- 
lier on  the  Russian  road,  and  felts  galore.  These  are  a 
great  specialty  of  Hamadan.  One  common  use  of  them 
is  under  a  saddle,  which  is  likely  to  have  more  wood  about 
it  than  is  comfortable  for  the  toughest  hide.  They  are 
also  popular  to  sit  on  or  sleep  on,  or  to  carpet  a  humble 
floor.  It  is  therefore  an  art  to  decorate  them  with  sim- 

83 


PERSIAN  MINIATURES 

pie  designs  in  dull  red,  blue,  or  green,  with  the  happiest 
results  for  the  eye. 

In  general  the  various  trades  tend  to  stick  together, 
though  their  boundaries  are.  not  very  clear.  Every  now 
and  then  I  come  across  a  new  department  of  cutlery, 
where  are  queer  curved  knives  such  as  might  be  most  at 
home  in  the  girdle  of  my  magnificent  Kurd,  marquetried 
with  gold,  perhaps,  and  having  strangely  watered  blades. 
Then  there  is  any  number  of  jewellers'  shops,  with 
bowls  of  seed  pearls,  big  filigree  gold  earrings,  and 
bigger  pendants,  often  crescent-shaped  and  engraved 
with  fine  lines  or  set  with  uneven  stones.  You  see 
gold  beads,  too,  and  odds  and  ends  of  coins  such  as 
are  always  being  dug  up  in  the  fields  of  the  East, 
piled  helter  skelter  with  cartridges  and  all  manner  of 
European  abominations. 

No  two  streets  of  the  Bazaar  are  of  the  same  length  or 
roofed  quite  alike.  Here  one  dark  corridor  ends  sud- 
denly in  a  blaze  of  sun.  There  another  reaches  a  long 
tentacle  down  hill,  the  dim  perspective  being  cut  at  inter- 
vals by  cross  bars  of  light.  I  am  treated,  too,  to  sudden 
glimpses  of  courts,  with  camels  in  them,  or  a  confusion  of 
bales,  or  tall-capped  people  drinking  tea  in  the  sun.  But 
long  before  I  have  seen  all  I  want  to  the  mir%a  leads  me 
around  to  a  part  of  the  Bazaar  handsomer  than  any  other. 
This  is  where  the  leather  merchants  foregather.  Leather, 
you  must  know,  is  another  great  specialty  of  Hamadan; 
and  the  leather  men  ply  their  trade  not  under  rafters  or 
matting  but  high  brick  domes.  The  way  in  which  some 
obscure  architect  handled  their  groined  vaulting  is  a 
thing  to  see,  as  are  the  pointed  lunettes  of  dark  wooden 
latticework  which  he  set  in  the  upper  gloom  of  the  octa- 

84 


THE  BAZAAR 

gons  where  two  streets  meet.  And  there  a  pointed  arch 
is  more  than  likely  to  open  into  a  quadrangle  with  a  pool 
in  the  centre,  or  a  trellised  brick  platform  where  it  must 
be  very  pleasant  for  a  sojourner  in  a  caravanserai  to 
smoke  his  water-pipe  and 
admire  the  deep  cusped 
porches  of  the  close  and 
their  interior  stalactites. 

I  find  here  such  footwear 
as  the  Sah'b  promised  me, 
of  the  most  wonderful  shapes 
and  colours.  The  ones  I 
admire  most  are  of  an 
emerald  green,  having  no 
more  than  an  inch  or  two 
of  hummingbird  splendour 
wherein  to  slip  a  humming- 


bird's toes.  Mine,  alas,  are  not  of  the  gender  worthy 
of  such  shoon.  I  also  admire  an  instrument  of  brass, 
shaped  like  a  hand,  with  which  a  workman  beats  a 
strip  of  vivid  morocco.  Other  workmen,  however,  run 
American  sewing  machines  as  nonchalantly  as  if  they 
had  invented  them.  The  saddlers  and  the  harness 
makers  are  the  natural  allies  of  this  gentry.  Their 

85 


PERSIAN  MINIATURES 

craft  is  the  more  interesting  to  watch  because  of 
the  deft  things  they  do  in  the  way  of  decorating.  They 
inlay  leather  of  one  colour  into  leather  of  another  colour, 
and  devise  out  of  polished  metal  and  slivers  of  mirror 
glass  quaint  ornaments  that  are  meant  to  glitter  and 
jingle  about  a  horse.  Nor  must  I  forget  those  leather 
cradles  with  a  piece  of  wood  set  into  each  end  for  stiffen- 
ing. No  one  dreams,  of  course,  of  leaving  that  wood  as 
it  comes  to  him.  It  can  be  carved  with  little  arabesques, 
or  covered,  if  you  prefer,  with  a  bit  of  brocade  or  old 
embroidery. 

What  the  mir^a  saves  for  the  last  is  a  quarter  of  open 
streets  where  prosperous  Russian  and  Armenian  shops 
do  their  wickedest  to  introduce  a  false  air  of  modernity 
into  ancient  Ecbatana.  He  points  out  to  me  with  pride 
the  glass  show-windows,  the  bilious  calicoes,  the — can  I 
believe  my  eyes? — cheap  American  shoes.  Yet,  quite 
accidentally,  he  shows  me  something  after  all.  For  on 
our  way  back  to  the  Office  we  pass  the  crowded  booths 
where  the  potters  of  Lalein  display  their  wares.  They 
are  not  forgers  or  sentimentalists,  you  understand,  those 
potters  of  Lalein.  They  supply  an  honest,  every-day  de- 
mand for  pipkins  to  cook  in,  for  bowls  of  every  imagin- 
able size,  having  plain  edges  or  fluted,  for  flowerpots 
whose  two  or  three  handles  give  them  an  inimitable 
finish,  for  jars  to  hold  water — though  they  rarely  do! 
Then  there  are  all  kinds  of  other  jars,  slim  ones,  pot- 
bellied ones,  tall  enough  ones  to  hold  a  man,  true  AH 
Baba  jars,  which  are  used  for  the  storing  of  wheat  and 
other  provisions.  The  biggest  jars  are  double-deckers, 
whose  upper  storey  is  conveniently  provided  like  the  flower- 
pots with  handles.  Most  of  this  earthenware  is  yellower 

86 


87 


PERSIAN  MINIATURES 

than  we  usually  see,  glazed  or  unglazed  as  the  case  may 
be.  But  a  good  deal  of  it  is  unevenly  enamelled  in  pea- 
cock colour,  turquoise  colour,  the  blue-green  of  the  domes 
of  Kazvin. 

And  they  tell  me  there  is  nothing  to  see  in  Hamadan! 


VI 
LEAF  FROM  THE  BOOK  OF  SER  MARCO  POLO 

At  the  straits  leading  into  the  Great  Sea,  on  the  west  side,  there 
is  a  hill  called  the  Faro. — But  since  beginning  on  this  matter  I 
have  changed  my  mind,  because  so  many  people  know  all  about 
it;  so  we  will  not  put  it  in  our  description,  but  go  on  to  something 
else.  And  so  I  will  tell  you  about  the  Tartars  of  the  Ponent  and 
the  lords  who  have  reigned  over  them. 

Colonel  Henry  Yule:  THE  BOOK  OF  SER  MARCO  POLO 

A  A  MATTER  of  fact,  there  is  something  to 
see  in  Hamadan.  I  regret  to  confess,  however, 
that  I  never  saw  it,  or  more  than  the  outside 
of  it — which  was  one  of  the  things  I  glanced 
at  the  first  day  I  visited  the  Bazaar.  Yet,  reader, 
I  shall  further  confess  that  some  time  afterward,  sitting 
in  a  window  above  New  York  harbour,  I  went  to  the 
pains  to  write  out  by  hand  and  to  copy  on  the  typewriter 
a  long  chapter  about  that  tall-domed  mausoleum,  whose 
squat  porch  and  solid  stone  door  open  upon  a  species 
of  lumberyard  neighbourly  to  the  potters  of  Lalein.  To 
that  end  I  turned,  very  diligently,  the  pages  of  Holy 
Writ  and  of  the  Apocrypha,  not  to  mention  those  of 
secular  volumes  not  a  few.  I  then  set  about  sugaring 
for  you  such  pills  as  the  history  of  Media,  of  Persia,  of 
Assyria,  of  Judaea.  I  treated  of  the  Babylonish  Captivity 
and  adventured  so  far  afield  as  Lydia  and  Greece,  bringing 

89 


PERSIAN  MINIATURES 

you  back  to  the  campaigns  of  Sir  Archibald  Murray 
and  Sir  Stanley  Maude.  I  even  made  an  excursion  into 
the  Higher  Criticism,  steering  in  a  subtle  manner  be- 
tween the  sensibilities  of  the  godly  and  of  the  profane. 
But  the  outcome  of  the  Higher  Criticism,  reader,  has  been 
to  cut  that  chapter  out  of  your  book.  For  when  I  began 
to  turn  over  the  tales  of  earlier  travellers  I  found  that 
every  one  of  them  had  something  to  say  about  Esther 
and  Mordecai,  and  their  tomb  in  Hamadan.  And  most 
of  those  conscientious  men  had  been  into  that  tomb. 
Whereas  I,  who  passed  it  so  much  oftener,  never  set  foot 
there. 

Why,  do  you  suppose,  was  that?  Certainly  not  be- 
cause Hamadan,  or  Ecbatana,  the  summer  capital  of 
King  Ahasuerus,  seems  to  me  too  unlikely  a  place  for 
Queen  Esther  to  have  died  in,  or  because  I  find  no  interest 
in  the  origin  of  the  Hebrew  Feast  of  Purim,  or  because  the 
tradition  of  the  tomb  is  too  recent.  As  early  as  the 
twelfth  century,  at  any  rate,  the  famous  Jewish  traveller 
Benjamin  of  Tudela  saw  our  mausoleum.  The  personage 
around  whom  Kit  Marlowe  wrote  his  "Tragedy  of  Tam- 
burlaine  the  Great"  destroyed  it  two  or  three  hundred 
years  later.  The  Turk  Khosrev  Pasha,  general  of  Sultan 
Murad  IV,  destroyed  it  again  in  1630.  And  the  his- 
torian Von  Hammer  says  it  then  lay  within  the  precincts 
of  a  mosque  of  a  thousand  and  one  columns;  while  the 
French  father  Sanson,  who  visited  Hamadan  about  1683, 
mentions  our  high  dome  as  being  a  remnant  of  a  magni- 
ficent temple,  ornamented  with  tiles.  The  existing  monu- 
ment, however,  seems  to  be  the  work  of  two  pious  Jews 
of  Kashan,  who  restored  it  in  1713.  But  nothing  about 
its  present  appearance  is  so  picturesque  as  a  piece  of 

90 


LEAF  FROM  THE  BOOK  OF  SER  MARCO  POLO 

gossip  I  heard  in  Hamadan,  to  the  effect  that  the  comfort- 
able fortune  of  a  certain  Hebrew  doctor  of  the  town  was 
founded  upon  a  jar  of  gold  he  accidentally  unearthed  in 
the  tomb. 

The  fact  is,  I  fear,  that  I  judged  the  unseen  interior 
of  that  whited  sepulchre  by  its  rather  gaunt  exterior.  I 
fear,  too,  that  I  am  not  of  those  who  find  it  essential  to 
read  the  Bible  literally.  Whether  Queen  Esther  actu- 
ally existed  or  not  is  to  me  less  interesting  than  the  circum- 
stance that  some  one,  a  longtime  ago,  made  her  the  heroine 
of  an  uncommonly  good  story :  not  quite  so  short  as  mod- 
ern editors  like,  but  well  enough  put  together  to  be  true. 
But  why,  I  wonder,  did  no  Sunday  School  teacher  of  my 
youth  ever  think  of  telling  me  that  King  Ahasuerus  was 
really  Xerxes  the  Great?  And  that  between  his  divorce 
from  Queen  Vashti  and  his  marriage  with  Queen  Esther 
he  made  an  irrelevant  journey  which  the  author  of  the 
Book  of  Esther  was  far  too  perfect  an  artist  to  say  any- 
thing about — to  Thermopylae  and  Salamis  and  Plataea? 


VII 
PERSIAN  APPARATUS 

Persicos  odi,  puer,  apparatus.     .    .     . 

Quintus  Horatius  Flaccusc  CARMINA 


TO  SUCH  vague  and  illusory  purposes  does  one 
go  to  school!  One  scans  incomprehensible 
lines,  one  desperately  thumbs  the  dog-eared 
lexicon  of  youth,  and  one  promptly  drops  the 
whole  affair  into  a  sieve  of  a  memory — in  order  to  pick 
up,  years  later,  out  of  some  clogged  corner  of  that  same 
sieve,  a  title  to  one's  hand!  It  came  to  me,  with  an 
amused  grin,  when  I  beheld  that  new  house  for  which 
we  had  foregone  the  unseen  enchantments  of  Resht  and 
had  fallen  into  conflict  with  the  paramount  Power  in 
north  Persia.  But  if  I  steal  the  phrase  it  is  not  because 
I  agree  with  the  poet.  The  poet  I  agree  with  is  our  own, 
who  says  something — does  he  not? — about  doing  in  Persia 
as  the  Persians  do.  At  any  rate,  I  share  with  pacifists, 
optimists,  and  other  dangerous  classes  of  citizens  a  dis- 
position to  be  too  easily  pleased  by  things  as  I  find  them. 
And  I  can  never  too  positively  declare  that  I  passed  in 
that  house  one  of  the  most  agreeable  winters  of  a  misspent 
life.  Yet  I  could  not  help  thinking,  the  first  time  my 
eye  fell  upon  it,  that  Horace  had  something  in  common 

92 


PERSIAN  APPARATUS 

with  my  Belgian  lady,  and  that  the  poet  of  white  Roman 
villas  might  have  sung  a  different  song  if  he  had  had  a 
little  actual  experience  of  Persian  pomp. 

These  reflections  were  inspired  by  the  simple  but  per- 
fectly obvious  fact  that  the  mansion  toward  which  we 
had  been  hastening  day  and  night,  as  fast  as  asps  could 
carry  us,  was  made  of  nothing  more  splendid  than — mud. 
Adobe  is  perhaps  the  more  graceful  name.  And,  unlike 
the  beaver,  you  pour  it  into  little  rectangular  moulds 
which  you  afterward  set  out  to  dry  in  the  never-failing 
Persian  sun.  You  may  even,  if  so  you  be  minded,  bake 
some  of  it  in  quicker  furnaces  and  produce  yellowish 
bricks  for  the  enrichment  of  a  gateway  or  a  facade.  But 
elemental  earth  and  water  are  the  foundation  of  all  Per- 
sian architecture.  The  Persian  architect  therefore  need 
waste  no  time  in  hesitating  between  timber,  brick,  stone, 
hollow  tile,  reinforced  concrete,  and  what  not.  He  has 
only  one  possible  building  material;  and  the  lot  on  which 
he  builds,  however  humble,  contains  as  much  of  it  as  he 
needs.  The  very  roofs  are  of  mud,  spread  thick  on  camel- 
thorn  and  poplar  trunks. 

Our  roof,  nevertheless,  was  not  that  kind  of  roof,  being 
a  low-pitched,  broad-eaved  timber  one,  overlaid  by  some 
kind  of  tar  paper  imported  from  that  mile  lumiere  of  this 
quarter  of  Asia,  Baku.  And  that  was  only  one  reason 
why  our  house  was  a  worthy  goal  of  so  rapid  a  journey, 
and  an  object  of  so  great  curiosity  to  the  good  people  of 
Hamadan.  For  it  also  had  Craftsman  windows  wider 
than  they  were  long,  provided  with  admirable  window 
seats  in  the  four-foot  wall,  to  say  nothing  of  an  arcaded 
veranda  more  reminiscent  of  a  Spanish  patio  than  of 
a  Persian  talar.  Most  contrary  of  all,  however,  to  the 

93 


PERSIAN  MINIATURES 

laws  of  the  Medes  and  the  Persians,  it  contained  the  un- 
heard-of rarity  of  wooden  floors — upon  which,  we  lived 
to  learn,  rugs  had  a  fantastic  habit  of  billowing  in  a  gale. 
We  lived  to  learn  several  other  unexpected  things  be- 
fore we  got  through  with  it.  For  a  new  house  has  idio- 
syncrasies as  distinct  as  a  new  ship  or  a  new  baby — and 
most  so  when  it  departs  from  accepted  traditions.  As 
for  a  new  mud  house,  it  is  rather  more  habitable  above 
ground,  I  fancy,  than  below.  Still,  our  struggles  with 
the  primitive  problems  of  life  brought  us  nearer  in  spirit 
to  the  inhabitants  of  trenches  than  to  dwellers  in  onyx- 
hailed  apartment  houses,  who  take  no  thought  how  they 
shall  wash  their  hands  or  read  their  evening  paper,  or 
wherewithal  shall  they  be  warmed.  But  we  belonged  to  a 
race  that  is  par  excellence  the  picknicker  and  camper-out 
of  the  earth,  and  between  us  we  could  scrape  up  humour 
enough  to  be  amused  at  our  experience  of  Persian  pomp. 
With  gas  or  electricity,  of  course,  we  had  nothing  to  do. 
For  light  we  depended  on  the  "blacke  oyle,  stynkeng 
horryblye,"  of  Baku,  eked  out  by  Russian  candles.  Of 
our  various  stratagems  to  keep  warm,  an  oil  stove  in  the 
end  proved  most  effective.  In  most  of  the  rooms,  how- 
ever, we  had  fireplaces,  wherein  we  burned  those  piteous 
faggots  which  in  Persia  pass  for  wood.  We  likewise 
made  a  good  start  at  burning  the  dining-room  floor, 
thanks  to  a  builder  who  had  never  before  set  a  fireplace 
on  anything  but  a  mud  underpinning  and  had  taken  too 
few  precautions.  I  cannot  resist  adding  that  this  gentle- 
man, an  Armenian  carpenter,  was  the  "intelligent  Per- 
sian" whose  topographical  information  Prof.  Williams 
Jackson  takes  pains  to  quote.  We  were  further  able  to 
boast  nothing  less  recondite  than  a  furnace,  the  invention 

94 


PERSIAN  APPARATUS 

and  the  pride  of  the  heart  of  the  master  of  the  house,  who 
devised  it  out  of  the  mud  of  his  cellar  and  who  caused 
mud  tunnels  to  conduct  its  affluvia  into  three  or  four 
rooms.  For  the  nourishment  of  this  furnace  we  origi- 
nally proposed  to  use  the  commonest  fuel  of  Persia,  tapeh. 
That,  if  you  insist  on  knowing,  is  dried  camel  dung. 
And  among  the  many  and  vivid  smells  of  that  treeless 
land  I  shall  always  remember  the  odour  of  burning  tapeh. 
We  found  it  a  little  too  penetrating,  even  when  so  far 
removed  from  sight.  We  also  found  the  problem  of  the 
conservation  of  energy  more  insoluble  than  ever,  when  we 
tried  to  make  some  sort  of  equation  between  the  un- 
appeasable appetite  of  the  furnace  for  poplar  wood  and 
the  infinitesimal  amount  of  heat  that  rose  from  the 
registers — which  were  merely  round  holes  in  the  floor. 
We  therefore  closed  them  and  the  incident,  lest  we  step 
into  them  and  break  our  necks. 

Water,  in  Hamadan,  is  a  commodity  even  more  pre- 
cious than  heat  or  light.  You  very  soon  learn  to  be  thank- 
ful if  you  can  get  enough  to  make  a  cup  of  tea,  forgetting 
such  excesses  of  luxury  as  hot  and  cold  taps.  We  tremb- 
lingly dug  a  well  in  our  cellar — and,  thank  God,  a  little 
water  oozed  into  the  bottom  of  that  well.  What  is  more, 
we  were  able  to  obtain  from  Baku  a  small  hand  pump, 
which  was  generally  in  good  enough  order  to  send  a  hope- 
ful drip  into  the  kitchen.  Thence  to  distribute  it  through- 
out the  house  was  a  matter  of  fetching  and  carrying. 
Under  the  circumstances  it  was  too  much  to  dream  of 
maintaining  more  than  one  bathroom.  But,  my  brethren, 
what  a  bathroom !  It  possessed,  for  one  thing,  my  favour- 
ite view,  looking  out  of  two  big  windows  across  the  flat 
roofs  and  sharp  poplar  tops  of  the  town  to  that  concave 

95 


PERSIAN  MINIATURES 

plain  of  such  inimitable  chameleon  changes  of  colour. 
It  further  possessed  a  monstrous  copper  samovar,  con- 
trived by  the  ingenuity  of  the  Sah'b,  into  two  mouths  of 
which  uncomplaining  underlings  fed  countless  gallons  of 
water  and  numberless  bundles  of  faggots.  But  the  glory 
of  the  room  was  the  bathtub.  The  foundation  of  this 
structure  was,  of  course,  mud.  The  mud  was  faced,  how- 
ever, like  the  broad  sills  of  the  windows,  with  the  square, 
blue-green  tiles  of  Lalein.  Have  I  said  that  Lalein  is  a 
village  in  the  region  of  Hamadan  where  the  lost  art  of 
glazing  earthenware  is  still  humbly  practised?  Never 
have  I  bathed  in  anything  quite  so  pretty  as  that  tank  of 
turquoise  water.  The  cement  that  held  the  tiles  together, 
though,  was  home-made,  lacking  anything  better  from 
Baku;  and,  alas,  it  was  not  a  success.  Not  only  had 
it  to  be  washed  off  after  one  had  taken  one's  bath,  but 
the  ceiling  of  the  room  below  was  observed  to  darken,  to 
drip,  and  most  threateningly  to  sag.  And  this  in  spite 
of  the  fact  that  the  water  from  the  bathtub  was  supposed 
to  run  away  into  the  garden!  We  therefore  had  to  give 
up,  with  bitter  lamentations,  our  peacock  tiles,  substi- 
tuting such  receptacles  of  metal  or  rubber  as  could  be 
improvised  out  of  the  resources  of  the  country. 

ii 

I  may  airily  seem  to  imply  that  I  had  a  personal  hand 
in  these  various  arrangements.  As  a  matter  of  fact  I 
arrived  on  the  scene  too  late  to  admire  the  invention  of 
most  of  them.  What  I  was  happy  enough  not  to  miss 
was  the  moving  in.  I  fear  the  Sah'b  and  the  Khanum 
were  less  happy  in  entertaining  a  guest-friend  who  had 
known  them  too  long  to  feel  any  scruple  in  combating 


PERSIAN  APPARATUS 

their  views  and  exposing  his  own  with  regard  to  the  fur- 
nishing of  their  rooms.  It  was  perhaps  fortunate  that 
we  were  a  family  of  three,  and  therefore  sometimes  able  to 
secure  a  casting  vote.  As  often  as  not,  however,  we  main- 
tained three  perfectly  irreconcilable  opinions.  Never- 
theless no  open  rupture  or  secret  coolness  resulted  from 
our  lively  arguments  on  interior  decoration.  And  I,  for 
one,  found  it  highly  amusing  to  open  and  to  dispose  of 
the  contents  of  the  cases  which  strange-looking  ruffians 
brought  to  the  house  on  their  backs. 

Our  two  rooms  of  state,  to  the  vast  scandal  of  Hamadan, 
literally  had  mud  walls,  ungarnished  with  plaster,  sizing, 
or  colour  of  any  kind,  but  smoothed  past  all  resemblance 
to  their  parental  earth.  For  ourselves,  we  desired  no 
better  background  for  Persian  plates,  for  Persian  minia- 
tures, for  Persian  mirror  frames,  for  brasses,  embroideries, 
rugs,  and  other  Oriental  objects  of  art  which  my  wise 
host  and  hostess  spent  much  of  their  leisure  in  collecting. 
A  good  many  of  these  objects  had  made  no  great  journey. 
But  others,  intended  more  strictly  for  use,  had  performed 
such  an  Odyssey  that  it  was  a  wonder  we  had  a  dish  to 
eat  out  of  or  a  chair  to  sit  in.  The  sojourner  in  Persia  is 
not  like  his  happy  cousin  of  Italy,  able  to  go  forth  wherever 
he  finds  himself  and  pick  up  delectable  furniture.  For 
the  people  of  the  East  use  almost  no  furniture.  They 
require  merely  a  few  rugs  or  mats  to  sit  and  sleep  on  and  a 
few  plates  and  bowls  for  their  cookery.  So  the  stranger  who 
dwells  among  them  has  to  transport  from  oversea  every- 
thing he  needs  for  his  own  more  complicated  housekeep- 
ing. In  a  place  like  Hamadan,  accordingly,  you  must 
first  get  your  goods  to  Enzeli  or  to  Baghdad,  whence 
they  are  transported  250  or  315  miles  by  caravan.  And 

97 


PERSIAN  MINIATURES 

if  you  have  seen  the  springless  gharries  that  climb  the 
passes  of  the  Russian  road,  or  if  you  have  noticed  how 
mules  and  camels  drop  their  packs  when  they  make 
camp,  you  will  not  wonder  that  a  neighbour  of  ours  had 
the  unhappiness  to  lose  an  entire  dinner  set  she  had  im- 
ported. We  were  delighted  to  find  that  only  about  half 
of  our  own  china  was  smashed. 

For  breakage  and  theft  we  were  prepared,  not  to  say 
moth  and  rust.  What  gave  us  something  of  a  shock  was 
to  discover  that  mice  had  been  at  our  books — as  precious 
in  Persia  as  chairs  or  soup  plates.  Since  the  books  were 
not  mine,  I  found  it  in  me  to  smile  upon  noting  that 
Bourget's  "Sensations  d' Italic"  had  been  devoured  from 
cover  to  cover.  O  subtle  mice  of  Ecbatana!  For  the 
French  in  general  they  exhibited  a  remarkable  taste. 
They  had  also  found  nourishment  in  Jane  Austen,  Joseph 
Conrad,  and  Henry  James.  It  surprised  me  more  to 
find  traces  of  those  hungry  Persian  rodents  in  certain 
Latin  authors,  among  them  the  poet  of  my  text,  who  had 
somehow  found  their  way  into  that  Parthian  galere. 
Hakluyt,  too,  had  whiled  away  some  of  their  hours — 
happily  in  the  not  irreplaceable  Everyman  edition.  They 
had  passed  by  our  rug  books,  however,  together  with 
our  books  on  Persia  and  such  works  as  we  possessed  of  the 
American  Red  Blood  school.  I  cannot  explain  this  un- 
accountable vagary.  I  merely  state. 

Our  library  was  on  those  days  when  a  terrific  winter 
wind  howled  out  of  the  gorges  of  Elvend  the  one  comfort- 
able room  in  the  house,  being  smaller  than  the  others 
and  having  only  one  big  window.  This  was  also  the  room 
that  had  least  in  it  to  remind  us  where  we  were,  with  its 
rows  of  Latin-lettered  books,  its  wicker  chairs,  its  tinted 

98 


PERSIAN  APPARATUS 

walls,  and  its  pictures  of  other  lands.  Two  of  the  latter 
were  for  me  an  unquenchable  wellspring  of  whimsical 
philosophy.  For  who  should  gaze  inscrutably  at  each 
other  from  either  side  of  the  door,  reminding  me  of  Paul 
Bourget  and  the  Persian  mice,  but  that  adorable  minx 
Lucrezia  Crivelli,  with  her  jewelled  fillet  bound  about 
her  brow,  and  the  romantic  Knight  of  Malta!  I  must 
add  in  passing  that  I  cannot  believe  him  really  to  have 
been  a  Knight  of  Malta,  because  I  do  not  believe  there 
were  any  Knights  of  Malta  when  Giorgione  painted  him 
— if  Giorgione  did  paint  him.  There  were  only  Knights 
of  Rhodes.  But  if  you  object  to  that  point  of  quibbling, 
you  might  at  least  call  him  a  Knight  of  St.  John.  How- 
ever, there  he  hung  in  remote  Ecbatana,  looking  no  more 
surprised  than  his  lovely  companion  to  find  himself  so 
far  away  from  Florence,  and  filling  me  with  obstinate 
questions  about  western  taste  and  the  vicissitudes  of 
western  wandering.  Did  Lucrezia  and  the  nameless 
Knight,  I  wonder,  ever  in  life  find  themselves  so  close 
together?  And  what  would  they  have  thought  had  it 
been  told  them  that  their  portraits,  multiplied  by  a  trick 
they  did  not  know,  should  in  centuries  to  come  adorn 
the  house  of  an  Englishman  in  Persia,  who  had  to  wife 
the  daughter  of  a  world  unknown,  or  barely  discovered, 
in  their  day? 

When  we  sat  in  that  room  at  tea  time,  with  a  wood 
fire  crackling  behind  a  pair  of  English  andirons,  it  always 
seemed  to  me  extraordinarily  characteristic  of  the  Anglo- 
Saxon  race,  in  which  familiarity  with  the  sea  has  so  long 
bred  familiarity  with  lands  beyond  the  sea,  but  which  so 
stoutly  takes  with  it  wherever  it  goes  its  own  language 
and  customs.  One  of  us  was  a  true  son  of  St.  George, 

99 


PERSIAN  MINIATURES 

though  accidentally  born  outside  the  fold  of  his  race. 
Two  of  us  were  descended  from  those  contemporaries  of 
Sir  Robert  Sherley  who  three  hundred  years  ago  sailed 
out  of  Old  England  to  found  a  New  England.  Yet  there 
we  sat  in  Persia,  the  three  of  us,  owning  none  but  English 
blood,  speaking — whatever  Cockney  or  Cantabrian  might 
think  about  it ! — no  tongue  but  English,  and  knowing  very 
little  more  about  the  land  in  which  we  sat  than  you  who 
read  these  words.  It  was  a  symbol,  that  cosy  little  li- 
brary, of  the  unconquerable  vitality  of  a  race,  of  the  pride 
of  a  man  in  his  own  house  and  his  own  acre,  which  has 
brought  forth  such  miracles  as  Athens  and  Venice  and 
Oxford,  which  flowered  once  into  the  painting  of  the 
Renaissance,  the  literature  of  Elisabeth.  But  a  better 
symbol  was  the  bare  slope  of  poplars  outside  the  window, 
still  Persia  after  three  thousand  years  of  conquest,  glory, 
and  disaster.  After  all,  I  sometimes  used  to  wonder, 
what  business  had  we  there?  And  how  about  this  mod- 
ern fashion  of  borrowing  our  neighbour's  art?  If  the 
Florentines  and  Venetians  had  followed  it  as  persistently 
as  we,  had  contented  themselves  with  collecting  pseudo- 
Greek  marbles  and  Byzantine  mosaics,  there  would  have 
been  no  ghost  of  a  Lucrezia  Crivelli  to  smile  across  a 
Persian  doorway  at  the  shadow  of  a  Knight  of — St.  John! 
Where  shall  we  end  with  all  this  transporting  of  one 
country  to  another?  Are  we  going  to  wipe  out  boun- 
daries and  become  cosmopolites  all? 

There  was  no  time  to  answer  these  long  questions  be- 
fore our  destinies  drew  us,  one  after  the  other,  out 
of  that  little  room.  And  when  next  we  met  it  was 
seven  thousand  miles  away,  when  the  world  was  already 
deep  in  the  greatest  of  wars.  Looking  at  it  from  a  high 

100 


PERSIAN  APPARATUS 

window  above  New  York  harbour,  I  have  sometimes 
seen  it  as  the  beginning  of  an  answer  to  those  questions 
of  our  Persian  library.  That  formidable  outburst  against 
the  ambitions  a-prowl  in  the  earth,  does  it  not  touch  too 
the  dream  of  the  Internationale,  and  isolate  anew  the  man 
without  a  country?  For  the  pride  of  a  man  in  his  own 
house  and  his  own  acre  is  rooted  very  deeply — nor  need  it 
imperil  another  man's  peace.  The  most  permanent  agree- 
ment of  men  is  to  differ.  The  thing  is  to  recognise  and 
to  respect  each  other's  differences.  If  one  happy  result 
of  so  much  unhappiness  should  be  to  let  the  sun  shine 
again  on  overshadowed  lands,  another  might  be  to  check 
the  standardising  of  mankind.  And  if  emigrations,  con- 
cession huntings,  even  gentleman  adventurings  fall  for  a 
time  out  of  fashion,  what  matter?  There  is  still  adven- 
turing to  do  in  a  country  which  has  not  yet  achieved  a 
Lucrezia  Crivelli  of  its  own!  •  •  •  •  • 


in 


The  most  characteristic  piece  of  Persian  apparatus 
in  our  house,  and  the  worthiest  to  be  considered  in  the 
Horatian  sense,  was  to  be  seen  below  stairs — if  you  will 
not  take  that  technical  phrase  too  literally.  The  Sah'b 
used  to  complain  that  he  never  knew  how  many  servants 
we  had,  one  of  his  favourite  diversions  being  to  ask  the 
Khanum  how  many  more  she  had  taken  on.  Persia 
follows  the  rest  of  Asia  in  this  regard ;  though  as  a  matter 
of  fact  we  were  not  so  dreadfully  attended  as  most  of 
our  neighbours.  Oriental  servants  work  for  longer  hours, 
with  fewer  outings,  than  occidental  ones,  but  each  one 
does  much  less.  The  only  one  of  ours  who  made  us  feel 
that  he  earned  every  slaU  of  his  somewhat  sketchy 

101 


PERSIAN  MINIATURES 

stipend  was  a  laborious,  quick-witted,  and  picturesque 
godson  of  the  great  Shah  Abbas,  a  youngster  whose  voice 
just  began  to  crack.  None  of  them,  for  that  matter, 
were  far  out  of  infancy.  And  it  surprised  me  to  see  how 
fast  they  picked  up  our  ways,  many  of  which  to  them  must 
have  seemed  inexplicable  and  capricious  beyond  reason. 

I  often  wished  I  knew  what  their  comments  were.  We 
sometimes  caught  rumours,  however,  through  confidences 
made  to  the  masters  of  other  servants.  When  we  went 
out  to  dinner  our  cook,  our  butler,  or  both,  would  occasion- 
ally go,  too,  to  help  in  the  kitchen  or  the  dining  room.  In 
fact,  it  is  not  good  form  for  a  person  of  such  consequence 
as  a  Firengi  to  leave  his  door  at  all  without  a  servant 
or  two  at  his  heels;  though  I  fear  we  rather  scandalised 
Hamadan  by  our  backwardness  in  conforming  to  this 
custom.  A  Firengi,  I  should  explain  in  parenthesis,  is  a 
Frank.  Strange/  is  it  not?  and  subtly  complimentary  to  a 
great  race,  how  since  the  time  of  the  crusades  that  name 
.has  stuck  in  western  Asia  as  descriptive  of  all  Europeans — 
even  Germans ! — and  their  cousins  beyond  the  seas.  The 
servants  of  the  F.irengis  in  Hamadan  formed  a  sort  of 
society  apart,  and  you  may  be  sure  that  among  them  no 
news  was  allowed  to  escape.  Thus  it  came  to  our  ears 
that  the  Sah'b  was  known  to  an  inner  few  as  the  Chief 
of  the  Desert — because  our  house  stood  by  itself  outside 
the  town!  And  I  was  enchanted  to  learn  that  I,  having 
come  to  Persia  without  wives,  children,  valets,  employ- 
ments, or  other  visible  human  ties,  had  been  decorated 
with  the  picturesque  title  of  Prince  All  Alone. 

You  of  the  effete  West  are  lapped  in  the  soft  ministra- 
tions of  the  Eternal  Feminine.  To  us  of  sterner  Ecba- 
tana  is  permitted  no  such  Sybarism.  I  may  note,  how- 

102 


^  •: 


PERSIAN  APPARATUS 

ever,  the  exceptional  case  of  Firengis  with  young  children. 
A  lady  of  the  land  may  then  risk  her  reputation  by  enter- 
ing the  presence  of  corrupt  Christian 
men.  She  does  so  bare-footed,  in  figured 
red  trousers  of  a  fulness,  loosely  swathed 
in  a  length  of  white  or  printed  cotton, 
covering  her  head  and  held  for  decency's 
sake  in  front  of  her  mouth.  Custom,  of 
course,  will  make  her  less  meticulous;  but 
when  a  stranger  is  present  and  her  duties 
require  the  use  of  both  her  hands,  it  is 
astonishing  how  ingenious  she  is  in  hold- 
ing her  veil  in  her  teeth  and  in  keeping 
her  back  on  the  quarter  of  peril. 

There  is  another  exceptional  case  to 
be  noted  of  a  country  where  laundresses 
are  more  than  likely  to  have  smallpox 
in  their  houses.  These  ladies  answered 
to  the  most  aesthetic  names:  Deer, 
Sugar,  Angel,  Peacock,  Parrot.  To  us, 
however,  they  were  generically  known 
as  Sister.  They  always  carried  on  their 
operations  in  big  blue-glazed  bowls, 
preferably  set  on  the  ground  near  the 
clothes  line,  beside  which  they  would 
squat  on  their  heels.  I  remember  one  of 
them  who  sent  us  one  week  a  substi- 
tute. Inquiring  into  the  matter  the 
Khanum  was  told  "Sister  makes  a 
petition:  she  will  have  a  child.  But  she 
will  come  next  week."  And  Sister  did!  The  milking 
of  a  cow  is  one  more  exceptional  case,  since  such  duties 

103 


PERSIAN  MINIATURES 

are  too  ignoble  for  man.  Here  again  a  blue-glazed  bowl 
comes  into  use,  being  held  between  the  knees  of  the 
operator.  I  might  add  that  for  the  complete  success  of 
the  operation  it  is  considered  necessary  for  the  calf 
to  be  tied  in  sight  of  the  cow.  Otherwise  the  sacred 
fount  infallibly  goes  dry.  We  had  the  greatest  trouble 
to  induce  our  personnel  even  to  try  the  experiment 
of  milking  when  no  calf  was  in  sight.  This,  I  suppose, 
is  why  the  Persians  are  so  unwilling  to  sell  or  to  kill  a 
calf,  and  why  they  are  so  tender  of  the  little  creatures. 
The  first  time  the  stork  visited  our  stable  a  small  animal 
wrapped  up  against  the  cold  in  green  felt  was  brought 
blinking  into  the  dining  room  for  us  to  admire.  And  we 
learned  that  the  calf  spent  its  first  few  nights  with  the 
servants,  in  their  quarters. 

These,  I  hasten  to  add,  were  not  in  the  house.  While 
there  are,  especially  in  Persia,  very  solid  advantages  in 
having  servants  out  of  the  house  at  night,  there  are  also 
disadvantages — as  will  appear  most  plainly  on  a  winter 
morning  after  a  party.  We  then  had  the  choice  of  walking 
a  long  way  through  the  snow  to  bang  on  the  stable  door, 
or  of  waiting  for  breakfast.  Their  own  breakfast,  and 
all  their  other  meals,  the  servants  were  supposed  to  pro- 
vide for  themselves:  primarily  because  a  Firengi  is  an 
impure  being,  whose  food  and  dishes  are  defilement  to 
those  of  the  faith;  secondarily,  because  a  Firengi  eats  meats 
too  strange  for  the  palate  of  a  Persian.  We  had  reason 
to  believe,  however,  that  at  least  in  our  house  the  Per- 
sians were  not  too  fastidious  about  our  menu  or  our  pur- 
ity! They  had  quarters  at  one  end  of  the  stable,  with  a 
fireplace  to  keep  them  warm  and  a  more  efficacious  inven- 
tion of  their  own  which  they  called  a  kursi.  A  kursi  is 

104 


PERSIAN  APPARATUS 

the  counterpart  of  a  Turkish  tandur,  being  a  fixed  or 
portable  brasier  covered  by  a  wooden  frame,  over  which 
a  quilt  or  a  big  rug  is  spread;  and  under  that  asphyxiating 
rug  or  quilt  a  considerable  household  can  spend  the  day 
or  the  night,  tucking  themselves  up  to  the  waist  or  the 
neck  as  the  case  may  be.  The  boys  never  could  under- 
stand why  we  didn't  have  kursis,  too.  The  rest  of  their 
furniture  consisted  of  rugs,  wherewith  to  cover  the  mud 
floor.  That  is  why  there  are  so  many  rugs  in  Persia— 
the  mud  floors.  And  there  is  another  good  reason  why  so 
many  of  them  are  a  little  more  or  a  little  less  than  six  feet 
long.  For  a  do-^art  a  two-yard,  is  all  your  Persian  needs 
in  the  way  of  a  bed ;  and  if  you  have  such  a  rug  that  is  not 
brand  new,  you  may  be  sure  that  some  very  picturesque- 
looking  customer  has  dreamed  upon  it  the  dreams  of  Asia. 
I  fear  that  the  dreams  of  our  dependents  were  sometimes 
interrupted.  For  the  roof  over  their  heads  was  a  mud 
one,  and  being  new  it  was  leaky.  After  a  rain  or  a  thaw, 
therefore,  we  would  hire  the  youth  of  the  neighbourhood 
to  play  tag  on  it,  in  order  to  pack  the  mud  the  harder  with 
their  bare  feet! 

What  to  my  alien  eye  was  most  striking  about  our  re- 
tainers was  their  dress.  To  be  served  at  dinner  by  a  butler 
in  bare  or  stockinged  feet,  according  to  the  season,  bearing 
upon  his  head  a  pontifical  mitre  of  brown  or  black  felt, 
not  unlike  the  tall  brimless  hat  of  Greek  monks  and  Rus- 
sian priests,  was  an  experience  which  I  did  not  live  long 
enough  in  Persia  to  take  as  a  matter  of  course.  It  always 
gave  me  the  sense  of  assisting  at  a  rite  celebrated  by  the 
flamen  of  an  unknown  creed.  It  made  no  difference  that  I 
myself  was  perfectly  capable  of  balancing  upon  my  brow 
an  even  more  fantastic  erection,  eaved  like  a  house,  shinier 

105 


PERSIAN  MINIATURES 

than  satin,  and  garnished  with  a  coquettish  ribbon. 
What  caught  my  eye  was  the  extraordinary  fact  that  any 
human  being  could  cherish  a  headdress  different  from  my 
own,  and  account  himself  disgraced  ever  to  be  seen  with- 
out it.  Tall  hats,  however,  were  not  all  that  distinguished 
our  serving  men.  Between  their  kola  and  their  unshod 
feet  flapped  a  trouser  not  so  full  as  that  of  the  country 
Turk  but  giving  no  hint  of  the  leg  it  contained,  and  a  suc- 
cession of  tailed  or  kilted  coats.  The  Persians  think  that 
Firengi  men  dress  as  indecently  as  Firengi  women,  in 
permitting  our  clothes  to  follow  so  closely  the  lines  of  our 
bodies.  The  fit  of  their  own  coats  stops  at  the  waist. 
From  there  hangs  to  the  knee,  or  below,  a  pleated  skirt 
which  even  a  travelled  Persian  unwillingly  exchanges  for  a 
Prince  Albert,  while  a  morning  or  evening  coat  is  to  him 
a  thing  of  shame.  Under  his  outer  garment,  with  which 
he  usually  dispenses  indoors,  he  wears  a  shorter  and 
thinner  one,  less  amply  kilted,  the  tight  sleeves  of  which 
are  slit  to  the  elbow,  and  dangle  decoratively  if  incon- 
veniently enough,  when  not  buttoned  up  or  turned  back. 
This  tunic  is  also  more  gaily  hued.  And  the  open  throat 
of  it  sometimes  reveals  successive  layers  of  inner  integu- 
ments, of  contrasting  colours. 

The  brightest  virtue  of  Habib,  our  butler,  was  that  he 
possessed  a  beautiful  emerald  undercoat  in  which,  when 
there  was  no  company,  he  was  sometimes  good  enough  to 
pass,  and  eke  to  break,  our  plates.  He  was  the  official 
head  of  our  establishment,  being  technically  known  as  the 
Chief  of  the  Service.  He  would  always  receive  an  order 
with  the  words  "On  my  eye!"  and  when  he  knew  not  how 
to  answer  us  he  would  say:  "What  petition  shall  I 
make?"  He  was  a  youth  of  twenty  or  thereabouts, 

106 


PERSIAN  APPARATUS 

espoused  to  a  young  person  of  twelve  or  thirteen  who 
stayed  with  his  mother.  The  society  of  neither  of  these 
ladies  seemed  to  interest  him  too  intensely.  He  preferred 
to  live  in  the  stable  with  the  other  boys  and  the  calf. 
He  also  loved  to  harden  the  mouth  of  the  Sah'b's  horse. 
And  when  the  time  came  to  work  in  the  garden  was  he 
most  in  his  element.  We  finally  had  to  hide 
from  him  a  pruning  knife  we  had  obtained  from 
Baku,  so  vastly  did  he  prefer  that  toy  to  a 
dishrag  or  a  duster.  I  can't  say  that  I  blamed 
him.  He  was  much  slower  and 
stupider  than  is  common  of  his 
quick-witted  race;  but  it  took  a 
great  deal  to  ruffle  his  temper,  and 
the  later  we  kept  him  up  at  night 
the  better  pleased  he  apparently 
was.  He  it  was  who,  during  a  period  of 
interregnum  of  which  I  shall  have  more  to 
say,  spread  the  table  for  the  Sah'b's  first 
bachelor  dinner  party  with  one  of  the 
Khanum's  sheets — and  not  one  of  the 
best.  Later  in  the  evening,  when  supple- 
mentary refreshments  were  served,  I  observed 
that  Habib  had  covered  a  tray  with  one  of 
the  discarded  napkins  of  the  dinner  table.  It 
was  not  really  dirty,  he  afterward  explained, 
and  it  seemed  a  pity  to  risk  spoiling  a  new  lace  doily !  I 
discovered,  though,  that  he  was  an  excellent  hand 
at  decorating  a  table.  Without  any  orders  he  once 
picked  to  pieces  a  lot  of  hyacinths  and  traced  with  the 
single  flowers  so  pretty  a  pattern  on  the  tablecloth  that  I 
hadn't  the  heart  to  affront  him  by  disapproving  of  it, 

107 


PERSIAN  MINIATURES 

though  it  was  a  little  more  finicky  than  I  would  have 
chosen  for  bachelors'  hall.  So  did  the  genius  of  his  race 
for  design  come  out  even  in  his  humble  fingers.  On  the 
whole,  I  learned  more  from  him  than  he  did  from  me— 
as  when  he  would  greet  us  in  the  morning  with  "  Peace  be 
with  you/'  or  politely  take  the  Khanum's  keys  in  both 
hands,  or  use  instead  of  the  first  personal  pronoun  the 
phrase  "your  slave,"  or  ceremoniously  call  one  aside  in 
consultation,  saying  "Without  trouble,  bring  your  honour 
here,"  or  on  state  occasions  serve  tea  on  his  knees.  And 
he  gave  one  strange  glimpses  of  the  world  he  lived  in  by 
speaking  darkly  of  jinn,  in  connection  with  a  friend's 
illness,  and  by  telling  us,  when  a  lost  watch  was  found  in 
the  house,  that  he  had  burned  candles  for  its  recovery. 

The  true  head  of  the  service  was  Mahmad  AH,  the  cook 
— or  Mehm'd  Ali  as  the  others  called  him.  Mehm'd  AH 
had  been  brought  up  as  a  butler  himself,  and  an  excellent 
one  he  was,  though  afflicted  with  a  slight  disfigurement  of 
the  mouth  and  a  stammering  of  the  tongue.  But  a  domes- 
tic crisis  had  driven  him  into  the  kitchen,  where  he  quickly 
learned  to  make  pancakes  and  cakes  much  more  com- 
plicated as  well  as  he  did  sauces  and  curries  for  pilau— 
which  really  sounds  more  like  pileu,  if  you  will  pronounce  it 
in  the  Italian  way.  Consequently  there  were  times  when 
we  were  moved  to  call  Mehm'd  Ali  out  of  his  kitchen  and 
say  to  him,  with  due  ceremony:  " Mehm'd  Ali,  may  your 
hand  feel  no  pain."  Your  white-capped  chef  or  darkey 
Dinah  might  not  know  how  to  take  so  cryptic  a  pronounce- 
ment. But  the  mitred  Mehm'd  AH  knew  it  for  the  highest 
possible  compliment.  And  being  no  more  than  nine- 
teen, though  already  old  enough  to  have  been  married 
and  divorced,  he  would  hide  his  blushes  in  a  low  bow,  stam- 

108 


PERSIAN  APPARATUS 

mering  in  reply:  "May  honey  be  to  your  soul."  The 
desire  of  Mehm'd  All's  heart  was  to  possess  a  wrist  watch. 
And  he  served  us  with  a  credit  that  only  seldom  lapsed 
for  the  sum  of  six  tomans  a  month — which  is  a  little  less 
than  six  dollars. 

I  am  bound  to  add  that  Mehm'd  AH  would  have  been 
less  clever  than  he  was  if  he  had  not  made  out  of  us  con- 
siderably more  than  that.  For,  being  cook,  he  did  the 
marketing.  I  was  astounded  to  find  telephones  in  Hama- 
dan,  a  convenience  at  that  time  strange  to  imperial 
Constantinople.  But  very  few  Hamadanis  had  one. 
We  did  not,  for  instance.  Neither  did  any  butcher,  baker, 
or  candlestick-maker  with  whom  we  dealt.  So  there  was 
no  sitting  comfortably  at  home  and  ordering  what  we 
wanted  from  the  Bazaar.  Nor  did  people  from  the 
Bazaar  peddle  their  wares  about  the  streets  to  any  such 
degree  as  do  the  people  of  the  Mediterranean.  There  is 
no  such  thing,  either,  as  a  delivery  cart  in  Hamadan. 
The  thing  to  do  was  to  go  to  the  Bazaar  in  person  every 
morning  after  breakfast,  and  Mehm'd  Ali  was  the  person  to 
do  that  thing — Mehm'd  Ali  and  his  slagerd,  or  apprentice. 
This  was  the  youngest  member  of  our  juvenile  establish- 
ment, a  round-faced,  bright-eyed,  russet-coloured  raga- 
muffin who  toted  Mehm'd  Ali's  flexible  market  basket, 
peeled  Mehm'd  Ali's  potatoes,  scoured  Mehm'd  Ali's 
earthenware  pots,  and  ate  Mehm'd  Ali's  bread.  Which 
is  to  say  that  Mehm'd  Ali  engaged  and  theoretically  main- 
tained him,  though  I  suspect  that  his  face  would  have 
been  neither  so  round  nor  so  rosy  had  it  not  been  for  the 
crumbs  from  our  table. 

Going  to  the  Bazaar  was  evidently  the  great  affair  of 
the  day.  It  was  amazing  how  long  it  took  Mehm'd 

109 


PERSIAN  MINIATURES 

AH  to  bargain  for  the  toasted  wafers  of  bread  or  the 
scarcely  thicker  flaps  of  sangak  which  filled  in  the  chinks 
between  Mehm'd  All's  own  white  loaves,  for  the  eternal 
mutton  of  the  country,  for  the  frequent  hare  and  partridge, 
or  francolin,  for  the  white  mast  which  is  the  Persian  ver- 
sion of  Dr.  Mechnikov's  Elixir  of  Youth,  for  the  famous 
melons  of  Isfahan  that  tasted  to  us  like  a  flatter  kind  of 
squash,  for  the  dubious  bunches  of  grapes  that  looked  fit 
only  Jor  the  scavenger  but  that  had  merely  begun  to  turn 
into  raisins  and  really  were  very  good.  Beef  was  far  rarer 
than  game,  vegetables  were  neither  varied  nor  good  unless 
they  came  out  of  our  own  garden,  while  such  rarities  as 
fish  or  strawberries  were  precious  as  pounded  pearls  and 
nightingales'  tongues.  Certain  minute  fish,  to  be  sure, 
were  indigenous  to  our  neighbourhood;  but  as  the  Persians 
catch  them  by  the  simple  expedient  of  poisoning  the  water, 
and  sometimes  die  afterward,  we  thought  twice  before 
indulging  in  them.  Once  in  a  while  a  runner  would  bring 
to  some  member  of  our  colony,  from  a  river  near  Kerman- 
shah  or  from  the  faraway  Caspian,  a  real  fish,  which  at 
once  became  the  foundation  of  a  state  dinner  party. 

Mehm'd  AH  was  so  happy  as  to  possess  in  addition  to 
his  other  attainments,  the  art  of  letters.  He  accordingly 
kept  strict  toll  of  his  purchases,  rendering  an  account  of 
them  every  day  to  the  Khanum.  There  came,  however,  a 
day  of  despair  when  the  Khanum  temporarily  shook  off 
from  her  feet  the  dust  of  Hamadan,  leaving  the  hapless 
Chief  of  the  Desert  and  the  Prince  All  Alone  to  shift  for 
themselves.  The  Chief  of  the  Desert,  being  a  man  of 
affairs,  therefore  handed  over  the  housekeeping  to  the 
very  incompetent  hands  of  the  Prince  All  Alone.  The 
beauty  of  this  arrangement  was  that  the  Prince  All 

no 


PERSIAN  APPARATUS 

Alone  knew  scarcely  a  word  of  Persian — despite  Habib's 
flattering  comment  that  his  progress  in  it  was  so  rapid  as 
to  crack  the  air!  Nevertheless,  I  gravely  pretended  to 
take  Mehm'd  Ali's  accounts.  And  when  I  couldn't  get 
it  through  my  thick  Firengi  head  what  Mehm'd  AH  was 
driving  at,  Mehm'd  AH  would  draw  little  pictures  in  my 
account  book  to  illustrate  his  expenditures.  Even  then  I 
sometimes  hesitated  between  an  egg  and  a  turnip,  or  a 
hen  and  a  partridge. 

It  was  that  latter  fowl  of  calamity  which  at  last  ruffled 
our  relations.  The  Sah'b  one  day  brought  home  some 
partridges.  It  so  happened  that  Mehm'd  AH  also  bought 
partridges  that  day;  and  lo  the  price  of  them  was  twice 
that  of  the  Sah'b's  partridges.  My  vocabulary  being  too 
limited  to  do  justice  to  the  occasion,  the  Sah'b  took 
Mehm'd  AH  over.  I  don't  know  whether  he  called  upon 
the  washers  of  the  dead  to  carry  Mehm'd  AH  out,  but  he 
named  Mehm'd  AH  the  son  of  a  burnt  father,  and  he 
cast  in  Mehm'd  Ali's  teeth  that  last  of  all  insults:  "Mehm'd 
AH,  you  have  no  zeal!"  He  also  docked  Mehm'd  AH 
a  toman  of  his  pay.  The  which  Mehm'd  AH  took  very 
much  to  heart.  No  cook  in  Hamadan,  he  stammered  in 
wrath,  bought  more  cheaply  than  he. 

It  chanced  that  there  was  to  be  football  that  afternoon 
—behold  again  the  Anglo-Saxon  in  foreign  parts — and 
after  football  the  neighbouring  Firengis  were  to  come  to 
us  for  tea.  Cakes,  therefore,  were  to  be  made,  loaves 
baked,  samovars  lighted,  china  and  silver  set  forth.  When 
I  hurried  home  at  the  end  of  the  game  to  receive  the 
hungry  host,  not  a  cake  did  I  find,  not  a  loaf,  not  even  a 
single  servant.  Your  Anglo-Saxon,  however,  is  not  so 
easily  stumped.  The  Firengis  had  their  tea,  if  a  little 

in 


PERSIAN  MINIATURES 

late  and  not  quite  so  plenteous  as  we  had  planned.  But 
the  subtle  Mehm'd  AH,  although  he  had  not  blackened 
our  faces  to  the  degree  he  hoped,  after  all  made  his  point. 
He  knew,  and  we  knew,  and  each  of  us  knew  the  other 
knew,  that  another  cook  capable  of  making  both  pilau 
and  pancakes  was  not  to  be  picked  up  in  Hamadan— 
outside  of  some  one  else's  kitchen.  For  the  sake  of  the 
greater  good,  therefore,  we  that  day  learned  the  lesson 
of  not  insisting  upon  a  lesser.  And  the  next  day  Mehm'd 
AH  treated  us  to  quite  the  most  magnificent  chocolate 
cake  in  his  repertory.  When  we  looked  at  it  our  mouths 
watered.  When  we  tasted  it  we  sent  for  Mehm'd  AH. 

"  Mehm'd  AH,"  said  the  Sah'b  in  all  gravity,  "may  your 
hand  feel  no  pain." 

"Sah'b,"  replied  Mehm'd  AH,  "may  honey  be  to  your 
soul." 

And  do  you  know?  Partridges  grew  a  little  cheaper — 
after  that ! 


12 


VIII 
JIMMY  &  CO. 

His  star  is  a  strange  one  !  one  that  leadeib  him  to  fortune  by 
the  path  of  frowns  !  to  greatness  by  the  aid  of  ihwackings  !  Truly 
the  ways  of  Allah  are  wonderful  / 

George  Meredith:  THE  SHAVING  OF  SHAGPAT 

C'lES  and  gentlemen,  I  have  the  honour  to  pre- 
sent to  you  Mr.  James — not  Henry.    Jimmy, 
the  ladies  and  the  gentlemen — if  any  have  suc- 
ceeded in  wading  so  far  into  our  long-winded 
book. 

This  introduction  is  necessary  to  sketch  our  household 
in  its  true  colours,  not  only  because  our  dog  is  so  im- 
portant a  member  of  our  family,  but  because  he  is  so 
admirable  a  proof  of  the  saving  inconsistency  of  human 
nature.  For  if  there  be  a  creature  which  a  Persian  is 
more  unwilling  to  touch  than  a  pig  or  a  Christian,  that 
creature  is  a  dog.  An  orthodox  Persian,  especially  if  he 
be  elderly  and  turbaned,  will  do  anything  to  avoid 
shaking  hands  with  us  or  drinking  our  impure  tea.  But 
if  Jimmy  chances  to  touch  so  much  as  the  hem  of  his 
garment,  the  only  remedy  is  to  go  straight  to  the  bath, 
take  off  his  turban,  and  jump  into  the  "treasury."  And 
about  the  water  of  that  treasury  I  have  already  told  you, 
or  insinuated  to  you,  something.  Yet  mark  the  subtle- 
ties of  orthodoxy  when  I  also  tell  you  that  Jimmy,  in 


PERSIAN  MINIATURES 

spite  of  the  double  disadvantage  under  which  he  suffers 
by  being  in  all  literalness  a  Christian  dog,  finds  favour  in 
many  an  Iranian  eye.  Although  in  the  prime  of  life  he 
falsely  passes,  by  reason  of  his  diminutive  stature,  the 
curliness  of  his  hair,  and  the  affability  of  his  manners, 
for  a  tuleh,  a  puppy.  Now  a  puppy  is  justly  exempted 
in  Persia  from  the  full-grown  depravity  of  a  sag,  or  dog. 
So  our  house-boys  pet  Jimmy  outrageously.  And  when- 
ever he  goes  out  with  us  I  notice  that  he  is  far  more  likely 
to  draw  admiring  than  disgusted  glances,  however  indis- 
creetly he  may  sniff  about  the  feet  of  the  faithful. 

Discretion,  I  fear,  was  never  Jimmy's  strong  point. 
Where  he  was  born  I  do  not  know,  but  his  character  is 
all  of  the  quixotic  island  from  which  Irish  terriers  spring. 
He  is  a  handsome  little  gentleman — I  used  the  word  ad- 
visedly— with  a  white  coat  which  he  finds  none  too  easy 
to  keep  unspotted  from  the  world,  with  a  black  patch  on 
one  quizzically  uplifted  ear,  with  a  humorous  eye.  It 
twinkles,  does  that  eye,  like  every  eye  of  Erin,  like  the 
eyes  of  all  who  are  irresistible  to  the  softer  sex  and  who 
most  savour  the  relish  of  adventure.  Jimmy  is  the  best 
of  companions,  lively,  affectionate,  sympathetic,  always 
ready  for  the  unexpected,  enduring  misadventure  without 
a  whimper.  He  is  not  deficient,  either,  in  the  more  home- 
spun qualities  of  gratitude  and  respect  for  authority. 
But,  devoted  as  he  is  to  us,  he  finds  our  house  too  small 
and  our  garden  too  narrow  a  field  for  his  inquiring  and 
democratic  spirit.  We  are  domestic  and  sedentary  while 
he  is  debonair,  irresponsible,  a  bit  of  a  boulevardier.  To 
be  out  o'  nights  is  what  he  adores.  While  I  will  not  liken 
him  to  the  ill  knight  in  Malory,  who  went  about  dis- 
tressing and  destroying  all  ladies,  I  fear  Jimmy  is  not 

114 


JIMMY  &  CO. 

above  forming  unhallowed  ties.  And  in  the  pursuit  of 
them  he  has  a  way  of  disappearing  for  hours,  for  days. 
What  is  most  affecting,  however,  is  to  see  the  prodigal 
come  home  from  these  absences  with  the  darkness  of  dis- 
illusion in  that  normally  twinkling  eye,  very  much 
chastened  in  spirit,  knowing  perfectly  well  what  reproaches 
will  be  heaped  upon  him,  yet  taking  our  hard  words,  per- 
chance our  heartless  chastisements,  with  a  comprehend- 
ing and  heroic  resignation. 

One  of  these  mysterious  disappearances  lasted  so  long 
that  we  suspected  abduction.  And  the  more  so  as  two 
days  after  Jimmy's  departure  the  servants  tried  to  con- 
sole us  by  producing  a  greyhound  somebody  wanted  to 
sell.  Wherein  is  exemplified  anew  the  Persian  inconsist- 
ency with  regard  to  dogs.  A  ta%i,  a  greyhound,  occupies 
the  same  privileged  position  as  a  puppy.  Nothing  is 
commoner  than  for  a  country  gentleman  to  maintain  a 
kennel  of  greyhounds,  that  he  may  course  hare  and  gazelle 
withal.  This  particular  greyhound,  like  most  of  the 
others  I  saw  in  Persia,  was  as  a  matter  of  fact  a  brown- 
hound.  He  had  long,  silky  brown  hair,  with  a  slight  crimp 
in  it  like  a  Russian  wolfhound,  and  absurdly  flapping 
ears.  The  Sah'b,  to  the  immense  disapproval  of  the 
house-boys,  sardonically  named  him  Ferda,  which  means 
To-morrow.  For  that  word  of  hope  occupies  as  large  a 
place  in  the  Persian  vocabulary  as  it  does  in  the  Spanish. 
As  for  me,  the  droop  of  the  newcomer's  ears,  the  colour 
of  his  locks,  and  his  hysterical  manner,  reminded  me  so 
strongly  of  a  well-known  portrait  of  the  authoress  of 
"Aurora  Leigh"  at  the  time  of  her  marriage,  that  I  could 
only  call  him  Mrs.  Browning.  In  short,  we  all  looked 
coldly  upon  him,  being  too  faithful  to  the  lost  dog  of  our 


PERSIAN  MINIATURES 

hearts.  Moreover,  Mrs.  Browning's  excessive  sensibility 
disgusted  us.  He  regarded  the  most  indifferent  gesture 
as  a  personal  menace,  and  was  forever  cringing  and  yelp- 
ing. His  one  virtue  was  that  he  could  run.  How  he 
could  run,  though!  We  coursed  with  him  once  or  twice, 
and  that  crimped  bundle  of  nerves  actually  caught  us  the 
makings  of  a  jugged  hare.  But  when  Mrs.  Browning 
finally  made  use  of  his  unique  gift  to  run  away,  all  we  re- 
gretted about  him  was  the  toman  or  two  we  had  paid  for 
so  poor  a  creature. 

Jimmy,  in  the  meantime,  failed  to  come  back.  So 
Habib  made  one  day  a  second  attempt  at  consolation  by 
proudly  bringing  in  a  bird  which  he  named  a  hawk. 
Falconry  is  by  no  means  a  lost  art  in  this  part  of  the  world, 
where  hunting  Khans  keep  their  hawks  and  their  falconers 
quite  like  any  baron  of  the  thirteenth  century.  But  this 
hawk,  while  he  consumed  chunks  of  raw  meat  with  the 
utmost  greediness,  happened  to  be  an  owl,  with  two  im- 
mense yellow  eyes  that  blinked  blindly  at  us  as  he  stum- 
bled about  the  brick  floor  of  the  veranda!  And  to  the 
infinite  disappointment  of  Habib  we  refused  to  add  him 
to  our  already  large  enough  list  of  pensioners. 

Among  these  was  an  obscurer  member  whom  I  have 
not  yet  mentioned,  belonging  to  the  pariah  caste  of  sag. 
Where  he  came  from  nobody  knew.  Nor  did  we  take 
very  kindly  to  him  at  first,  the  more  so  as  the  meat  bill 
took  a  turn  for  the  worse  about  that  time.  But  as  often 
as  we  ordered  him  away  he  infallibly  turned  up  again, 
generally  in  the  vicinity  of  the  stable.  Incidentally  the 
boys  kept  hinting  that  dwellers  in  the  desert  required 
some  sort  of  watchman.  Many  a  dark  word  threw 
they  out  as  well  about  wolves  that  ravened  down  from  the 

116 


JIMMY  &  CO. 

mountains  on  winter  nights,  plainly  giving  us  to  under- 
stand that  nobody  could  keep  the  wolf  from  the  door,  or 
protect  our  slumbers,  to  say  nothing  of  their  own,  better 
than  this  humble  citizen  of  the  country.  So  what  did  it 
avail  us  to  kick  against  the  pricks?  We  gave  in,  without 
admitted  surrender  or  triumph  on  either  side,  and  before 
we  knew  it  the  sag  was  on  terms  of  familiarity  with  us  all. 
He  received,  of  course,  none  of  Jimmy's  honours.  He 
never  came  into  the  house,  being  nothing  but  a  plain 
yaller  dog,  rather  bigger  and  redder  than  the  ordinary, 
with  a  pair  of  clipped  ears  that  gave  him  a  vague  distinc- 
tion. But  I  noticed  that  Mehm'd  Ali's  rosy-cheeked  ap- 
prentice was  not  too  far  gone  in  the  canons  of  the  orthodox 
to  take  the  interloper  into  his  arms  or  even  to  treat  him  to 
surreptitious  kisses. 

At  last  it  began  to  be  whispered  that  the  powers  of  the 
air  were  against  us,  for  the  new  watch-dog  proceeded  to 
develop  a  mysterious  malady.  He  would  twitch  spas- 
modically at  inopportune  moments,  and  most  dolorously 
would  he  howl  in  season  and  out.  These  symptoms,  Habib 
explained,  were  due  to  the  fact  that  an  enemy,  probably  a 
thief  who  had  set  apart  our  house  for  some  midnight  foray, 
had  fed  the  unfortunate  creature  with  a  piece  of  bread  or 
a  lump  of  meat  containing  an  insidious  needle.  The  needle, 
of  course,  had  stuck  in  the  dog's  throat,  and  was  the  cause 
of  his  woe.  Whether  the  needle  was  finally  fatal  to  him, 
or  whether,  as  the*  servants  vowed,  the  implacable  robber 
shot  him,  we  never  knew.  At  any  rate,  he,  too,  disap- 
peared, and  another  reigned  in  his  stead.  This  was  a  ter- 
rifying animal,  bigger  and  yellower,  without  the  distin- 
guished ears,  who  at  once  made  himself  so  much  at  home 
that  he  at  first  resisted  all  our  attempts  to  get  into  or  out 

117 


PERSIAN  MINIATURES 

of  the  garden.  We  stuck  to  the  point,  however,  and  he 
ended  by  grudgingly  recognising  our  rights. 

But  Jimmy  still  stayed  away — as  we  felt  convinced,  in  a 
state  of  captivity.  Yet  when  two  or  three  months  had 
gone  by  we  gave  him  up  as  gone  for  good.  Then  one  of 
the  house-boys  confided  to  us — we  suspected  because  his 
tenure  of  office  had  become  a  little  insecure — that  his 
mother,  while  paying  a  call,  had  seen  in  the  garden  of  her 
hostess  a  white  puppy.  Obscure  as  this  clew  was,  we  could 
not  but  follow  it  up.  And  it  led  to  a  deed  of  high-handed- 
ness which  enlightened  me  not  a  little  on  some  of  the  ways 
of  Persia.  For  before  we  knew  it  we  were  told  that  the 
son  of  the  lady  in  whose  garden  a  white  puppy  had  been 
seen  had  been  captured  by  our  retinue,  and  was  held  in  the 
stable  at  our  disposal  as  a  hostage ! 

There  is  this  beauty  about  justice  in  Persia,  that  every- 
body administers  it  to  suit  himself.  There  exist  in  Hama- 
dan  municipal  dungeons,  gendarmerie  prisons,  and  Black 
Holes  of  Calcutta  in  the  Governor's  palace,  wherein 
lie  in  chains  the  more  notorious  malefactors  of  the 
province.  But  in  general  people  find  it  simpler  and 
more  satisfactory  to  attend  to  a  private  enemy  them- 
selves— when  they  can  catch  him.  No  great  Khan,  for 
instance,  would  dream  of  carrying  on  his  aifairs  without 
shutting  up  his  villagers  whenever  he  chooses.  And 
sometimes  he  shuts  up  another  Khan's  villagers.  Even 
in  a  certain  Firengi  office  known  to  me  have  I  seen  an 
upper  chamber  reserved  for  the  entertainment  of  recalci- 
trant rug  weavers  who  eat  up  the  money  advanced  them 
for  wool  and  dyes.  There  they  sit,  not  too  uncomfortably, 
nourished  at  the  expense  of  the  Firengi,  and  no  doubt  more 
richly  than  they  are  used,  until  their  friends  produce  the 

118 


JIMMY  &  CO. 

money  or  give  satisfactory  bond  that  the  rug  will  be  com- 
pleted according  to  contract.  It  is  the  custom  of  the 
country,  and  nobody  objects  to  it — unless  possibly  the 
weaver.  And  he  always  has  the  recourse  of  taking  bast 
at.  one  of  the  mosques  or  sacred  tombs  which  in  every 
town  are  an  asylum  not  to  be  violated  even  by  the  Shah. 
So  the  boy  whom  the  servants  suspected  of  knowing  too 
much  about  Jimmy  was  locked  up  with  the  cow  until  the 
Sah'b  was  ready  for  him.  The  Sah'b  was  ready  for  him 
after  dinner.  Into  the  library  the  prisoner  was  accord- 
ingly dragged,  an  extremely  ragged  and  dejected  looking 
urchin,  who  was  not  too  dejected  to  cast  a  curious  eye 
upon  the  strange  contrivances  whereon  we  perched,  to  say 
nothing  of  the  counterfeit  presentment  of  Lucrezia 
Crivelli.  Being  put  through  the  third  degree,  the  prisoner 
first  declared  that  he  knew  nothing  about  any  puppy  what- 
soever. Under  pressure  he  then  admitted  that  he  had 
chanced  to  catch  sight  at  Sheverin,  three  miles  out  of 
town,  far  away  from  his  mother's  garden,  a  puppy.  But 
it  was  not  a  white  puppy  with  black  spots.  It  was  a 
yellow  puppy  with  no  spots  at  all.  And  no  amount  of 
subtle  suggestion  could  make  him  endow  that  puppy  with 
curls  or  give  any  account  of  its  origin,  history,  or  habits. 
What  the  bastinado  might  have  brought  forth  I  do  not 
know.  If  one  happens  to  lack  the  proper  appliances 
for  beating  a  man  on  the  soles  of  his  bare  feet,  or  if  one 
dislikes  the  commotion  which  that  treatment  usually 
brings  forth,  one  can  always  hire  the  police  to  do  it.  And 
the  better  you  tip  the  policeman  the  more  stripes  will  he 
administer.  In  that  respect,  however,  we  did  not  follow 
the  customs  of  the  country.  We  merely  threatened  to, 
and  let  our  helpless  victim  go  back  to  the  stable  with  his 

119 


PERSIAN  MINIATURES 

captors.  There  they  all  spent  the  night  sociably  under 
the  same  kursi,  and  the  next  morning  the  victim  departed 
in  peace  about  his  own  unholy  affairs. 

We  had  quite  given  up  hope  of  ever  seeing  Jimmy  again 
when  he  was  brought  back  one  day  by  a  policeman  who 
flatly  refused  to  say  where  he  had  found  him.  Alas,  poor 
Jimmy!  Never  have  I  seen  a  humbler  little  dog.  Of 
course  he  knew  us.  He  could  not  have  forgotten  us.  We 
saw  it  in  his  half-averted  eye.  But  we  also  saw  that  he 
entertained  no  hope  of  forgiveness.  What  was  most 
pitiful,  however,  were  the  marks  of  chafing  around  his 
neck,  the  wounds  on  his  head,  and  the  unutterable  dirti- 
ness of  his  once  white  coat.  So  we  killed — well,  not  a 
fatted  calf  for  him,  since  that  would  have  transgressed  the 
laws  of  the  Medes  and  the  Persians.  We  let  him  gobble 
up  more  chops  and  chicken  bones  than  were  good  for  him, 
though,  and  he  was  nearly  gobbled  up  in  turn,  out  of 
jealousy,  by  the  common  or  garden  sag  who  had  taken  the 
place  of  his  old  friend  the  yellow  cur  with  a  needle  in  his 
throat.  And  it  was  not  long  before  Jimmy  became  as 
handsome  and  humorous  as  ever,  and  a  firm  friend  of 
the  hard-hearted  watch-dog. 

But  did  that  escapade  cure  him  of  running  away?  Of 
course  not!  Can  Jimmy  change  his  spots,  or  the  Ethio- 
pian his  skin? 


120 


IX 

THE  GREAT  SLAUGHTER 

The  Passion  Play  at  Ammergau,  with  its  immense  audiences, 
the  seriousness  of  its  actors,  the  passionate  emotion  of  its  specta- 
tors, brought  to  my  mind  something  of  which  I  had  read  an  ac- 
count lately;  something  produced,  not  in  Bavaria  or  Christendom 
at  all,  but  far  away  in  that  wonderful  East,  from  which,  whatever 
airs  of  superiority  Europe  may  justly  give  itself,  all  our  religion 
has  come,  and  where  religion,  of  some  sort  or  other,  has  still  an 
empire  over  men's  feelings  such  as  it  has  nowhere  else. 

Matthew  Arnold:  ESSAYS  IN  CRITICISM 


WE  HAD  been  in  Hamadan  barely  a  week 
when,  one  afternoon  as  we  went  about  on 
a  round  of  calls,  we  met  a  file  of  small 
boys  who  did  not  conceal  their  disposition 
to  hoot  at  us.    One  could  hardly  blame  them.     Of  all 
human  employments,  that  of  disseminating  pasteboards 
has  always  seemed  to  me  the  most  impossible  to  take 
seriously.     What  further  attracted  me  to  the  small  boys, 
however,  was  a  toy  flagstaff  they  were  playing  with,  flying 
a  three-cornered  green  rag  and  tipped  with  a  piece  of  tin 
cut  into  the  silhouette  of  an  open  hand.     And  that  night 
or  the  next  as  we  came  home  from  a  dinner  party  we 
passed   several   lighted   mosque   windows,  wide-pointed 
arches  filled  with  white  paper  and  crisscrossed  by  heavy 

121 


THE    FLAGELLANTS 


122 


THE  GREAT  SLAUGHTER 

wooden  bars,  behind  which  we  could  hear  sounds  of 
chanting,  interrupted  by  curious  single  volleys  of  clapping. 

"Hello!"  exclaimed  one  of  my  companions.  "Is  it 
Mobarrem  already?" 

It  was  Mobarrem  already.  Mohan  em  is  the  first  month 
of  the  Mohammedan  year,  which  as  everybody  knows  is 
a  lunar  year  and  therefore  walks  backward  through  the 
seasons.  So  don't  imagine  that  if  the  first  of  Moharrem 
fell  on  November  3Oth  in  1913,  it  will  continue  with  the 
monotony  of  our  own  calendar  to  fall  on  November  3oth. 
On  the  contrary,  as  it  turns  up  eleven  days  or  so  earlier 
every  twelvemonth,  it  will  not  return  to  that  part  of 
the  year  until  1946 — and  then  will  probably  hit  another 
date. 

However,  even  outside  of  Persia  I  had  seen  enough  of 
what  Persians  do  in  Mobarrem  to  look  forward  with  vast 
interest  to  what  they  might  do  here. 

ii 

The  month  of  Mobarrem  means  far  more  to  the  people 
of  Iran  than  it  does  to  their  co-religionists  in  other  coun- 
tries, for  reasons  which  I  shall  have  to  take  a  little  time 
to  explain.  We  have  heard  a  good  deal  of  late  of  Pan- 
Islamism,  Holy  Wars,  and  what  not;  but  those  who  say 
most  about  these  things  say  very  little  about  the  fact  that 
the  Arabs,  the  Turks,  the  Turkomans,  and  the  Afghans 
on  one  side,  and  the  Persians  and  most  of  the  Moham- 
medan Indians,  on  the  other,  love  each  other  about  as 
much  as  Queen  Elisabeth  and  the  Pope  used  to,  or  the 
Spaniards  and  the  Dutch.  For  aside  from  questions  of 
race,  language,  and  so  forth,  the  Mohammedan  world  is 
divided  against  itself  on  a  religious  question  which  the 

123 


PERSIAN  MINIATURES 

Persians  take  much  more  to  heart  than  any  of  their 
neighbours. 

When  the  Prophet  died  in  632,  he  left  no  explicit  direc- 
tions as  to  his  successor  in  the  leadership  of  the  new 
theocratic  state  he  had  founded.  It  had,  to  be  sure, 
been  more  or  less  vaguely  understood  that  his  mantle 
would  fall  upon  his  cousin  and  son-in-law  Ali.  This 
Ali,  gloriously  known  as  the  Lion  of  God,  had  been  after 
the  Prophet's  first  wife,  Mother  of  the  Moslems  (on  whom 
be  peace!),  the  Prophet's  first  convert.  Ali  had  also 
married  the  Prophet's  daughter  Fatma,  by  whom  he  had 
two  sons.  These  two,  Hasan  and  Hosein,  were  the  sole 
surviving  male  descendants  of  the  Prophet,  who  had 
pronounced  their  father  his  son,  his  vicar,  and  his  delegate. 
And  the  Persians  claim  that  during  Mohammed's  fare- 
well pilgrimage  to  Mecca  the  archangel  Gabriel  appeared 
to  him,  instructing  him  to  proclaim  Ali  as  his  legal  suc- 
cessor, and  that  on  his  way  back  to  Medina  the  Prophet 
did  so. 

Be  that  as  it  may,  there  was  enough  indefmiteness  with 
regard  to  his  intentions  for  the  Arabs  to  elect  as  the  first 
Caliph  or  temporal  successor  of  Mohammed  another 
member  of  his  family,  his  father-in-law  Abu  Bekr.  This 
Abu  Bekr — otherwise  Father  of  the  Full  Moon,  or  of 
Mohammed's  youngest  wife  Aishah — was  succeeded  in 
634  by  Omar,  who  ten  years  later  met  a  violent  end;  and 
after  him  came  Osman  or  Othman,  assassinated  in  turn 
in  656.  Then  only  did  Ali,  no  longer  a  young  man,  who 
had  hitherto  been  accorded  merely  a  vague  spiritual 
primacy,  inherit  the  temporal  power  as  fourth  Caliph. 
In  the  twenty-four  years  since  the  Prophet's  death,  how- 
ever, the  new  Mohammedan  state  had  grown  so  rapidly 

124 


THE  GREAT  SLAUGHTER 

that  to  the  parent  province  of  Arabia  had  already  been 
added  Syria,  Egypt,  and  Persia.  It  was  a  state  of  im- 
perial size,  and  the  Lion  of  God  proved  not  to  be  of  the 
temper  of  an  emperor.  Dissensions  accordingly  arose 
between  him  and  the  warlike  governors  of  Egypt  and 
Syria,  which  certain  fanatics  undertook  to  settle  by  stab- 
bing the  three  of  them  and  holding  a  new  election.  But 
this  praiseworthy  project  was  successful  only  in  the  case 
of  Ali.  He  was  killed  in  66 1  at  Kufa,  a  town  of  that 
Mesopotamian  region  known  in  the  Near  East  as  Irak 
Arabi.  The  Caliphate  then  passed  to  Ali's  elder  son 
Hasan,  who  soon  abdicated  in  favour  of  Moavia,  gover- 
nor of.  Syria  and  founder  of  the  Ommayad  dynasty  of 
Damascus.  Hasan  retired  to  the  holy  city  of  Medina, 
where  about  669  he  was  poisoned  by  one  of  his  numerous 
wives. 

When  Moavia  died  in  680,  the  people  of  Kufa  sent 
word  to  Ali's  second  son  Hosein,  who  also  lived  in  Medina, 
that  they  would  recognise  him  as  the  new  Caliph  instead 
of  Moavia's  son  Yezid.  Yezid,  however,  lost  no  time  in 
taking  steps  to  secure  his  own  succession.  When  Hosein 
arrived  at  Kufa  with  his  family  and  a  small  retinue  the 
gates  were  closed  against  him,  and  he  was  surrounded  by  a 
vastly  superior  force  under  the  command  of  Amr  ibn 
Saad,  the  conqueror  of  Egypt.  Seeing  himself  betrayed 
and  hopelessly  outnumbered,  Hosein  asked  permission 
of  Amr  to  return  in  safety  to  Medina,  or  even  to  proceed 
to  Yezid's  court  at  Damascus.  This  parley  was  cut 
short  by  Obeidullah  ibn  Ziad,  the  governor  of  Kufa  just 
appointed  by  Yezid,  who  sent  his  lieutenant  Shimr  to 
insist  that  Amr  demand  Hosein's  unconditional  surrender 
or  resign  his  command.  Hosein  refused  to  surrender. 

125 


PERSIAN  MINIATURES 

In  spite  of  the  odds  against  him,  he  took  up  his  position 
on  the  hillock  of  Kerbela,  above  the  Euphrates,  and  pre- 
pared for  battle.  This  was  on  the  ninth  day  of  Mohar- 
remy  in  the  year  of  the  Hegira  61,  or  68 1  of  our  era. 

History  and  legend  are  so  intertwined  in  the  story 
that  the  forces  of  the  Arabs  from  Medina  are  variously 
reported  to  have  been  from  seventy  to  six  hundred  men, 
horse  and  foot,  while  those  of  the  Syrian  cavalry  amounted 
to  four  or  five  thousand.  The  chief  Al  Hurr,  who  had 
first  intimated  to  Hosein  that  the  gates  of  Kufa  would 
not  open  to  him,  now  went  over  to  the  latter  with  his 
brother,  his  son,  and  one  of  his  slaves.  So  small  a  rein- 
forcement, however,  naturally  had  no  effect  on  the  final 
outcome.  After  a  heroic  resistance  of  two  days,  during 
which  the  beleaguered  Arabs  had  also  to  fight  against 
sun  and  thirst,  Hosein  alone  remained  alive  of  the  men 
of  his  party.  At  nightfall  of  the  loth  of  Molarrem  he 
was  shot  in  the  mouth  by  an  arrow,  while  attempting  to 
get  water  from  the  Euphrates.  His  sister  Zeineb,  rush- 
ing out  from  her  tent,  adjured  the  Syrians  to  spare  the 
grandson  of  the  Prophet.  But  their  answer  was  to  set  the 
camp  on  fire  and  to  strike  down  Hosein  under  thirty-three 
swords  and  lances.  His  head  was  then  cut  off  by  Shimr 
who,  according  to  the  historian  Masudi,  carried  the  bloody 
trophy  to  his  chief  Obeidullah,  chanting  exultingly: 

"Cover  me  with  gold  and  with  silver  to  my  stirrups, 

For  I  have  killed  the  Seid  of  the  veiled  face. 

I  have  slain  the  most  noble  of  men  by  his  father  and  his  mother, 

The  most  noble  when  they  produce  titles  of  nobility." 

The  governor  of  Kufa  sent  the  head,  together  with  the 
women  and  children  of  Hosein's  family,  to  Yezid  at 

126 


THE  GREAT  SLAUGHTER 

Damascus.  And  Masudi  adds  that  the  cruel  Caliph 
further  mutilated  with  his  staff  the  head  of  his  rival,  until 
rebuked  by  an  old  man  who  said:  "Often  have  1  seen  the 
lips  of  the  Prophet  joined  to  those  lips  in  a  kiss." 

These  events  are  what  the  Persians  and  other  Shiites, 
or  schismatics,  commemorate  during  the  month  of  Mo- 
harrem.  It  is  for  them  a  month  of  mourning,  during 
which  they  wear  black  or  otherwise  display  signs  of  grief, 
and  neither  weddings  nor  other  festivities  take  place  in 
those  thirty  days.  For  the  Persians,  however,  it  is  not 
only  a  religious  matter.  Their  history  is  longer  and  more 
glorious  than  that  of  the  Arabs,  by  whom  they  were  con- 
quered during  the  Caliphate  of  Omar.  Mesopotamia 
was  a  Persian  province  until  the  second  Caliph  captured 
Ctesiphon  in  637.  Four  years  later  his  army  swept  through 
the  very  passes  which  the  Turks  and  the  Russians  have 
lately  brought  back  to  the  notice  of  the  world,  and  by 
the  battle  of  Nehavend,  some  fifty  miles  south  of  Hama- 
dan,  the  last  of  the  Sasanian  kings  was  finally  defeated 
and  the  greater  part  of  Persia  fell  into  their  hands.  This 
blow  to  the  national  pride  is  perhaps  the  chief  reason  why 
the  Persians  deny  the  validity  of  the  Caliphate.  Not 
only  do  they  refuse  to  recognise  the  first  three  Caliphs 
— or  any  of  the  others,  for  that  matter — but  they  execrate 
them,  and  Omar  in  particular,  with  a  zeal  which  to  the 
Arabs  and  the  Turks  is  the  height  of  blasphemy.  "O 
God,  curse  Omar!  Then  Abu  Bekr  and  Omar!  Then 
Osman  and  Omar!  Then  Omar!  Then  Omar!"  is  an 
imprecation  often  and  solemnly  repeated  by  the  Shiites 
to  the  horror  of  all  true  Sunnite  or  orthodox  Moham- 
medans. The  Persians  also  celebrate  the  anniversary 
of  the  assassination  of  Omar  (may  his  name  be  cursed!) 

127 


PERSIAN  MINIATURES 

with  the  greater  zest  because  he  was  stabbed  by  a  Persian 
slave.  And  one  of  the  ways  by  which  they  still  mark  that 
day  of  rejoicing  is  to  burn  the  hated  Caliph  in  effigy. 

The  case  is  the  more  curious  because  the  conquest  of 
Omar  all  but  put  an  end  to  Zoroastrianism.  Only  in 
southeastern  Persia  and  in  Bombay  do  there  remain  a 
few  adherents  of  this  ancient  faith.  But  the  Persians 
fiercely  contend  that  AH  and  his  descendants  alone  were 
the  true  successors  of  the  Prophet.  The  tombs  of  AH 
and  Hosein  at  Nejef  and  Kerbela,  in  Mesopotamia,  are 
to  them  places  of  pilgrimage  almost  if  not  quite  as  sacred 
as  Mecca  and  Medina.  Other  members  of  the  holy  family 
are  buried  at  Kazimein  and  Samarra,  north  of  Baghdad, 
while  in  their  own  country  the  Persians  venerate  at  Me- 
shed the  tomb  of  the  eighth  of  the  descendants  of  the 
Prophet,  Riza.  In  all  there  were  twelve  of  these  per- 
sonages, who  are  known  as  the  Imams.  They  are  re- 
garded as  more  than  mortals,  whose  natures  were  without 
sin  and  whose  bodies  cast  no  shadow.  The  last  one 
disappeared  in  873;  and  although  a  tomb  of  him  exists  at 
Samarra  the  Persians  believe  that  he  never  died,  but  will 
reappear  in  the  great  mosque  of  Meshed  at  the  Judgment 
Day  as  the  Mahdi  or  Guide. 

Another  element  of  nationality  enters  into  the  legend 
of  Hosein  in  that  the  Persians  devoutly  believe  his  wife, 
Harar  or  Omm  Leila,  to  have  been  the  daughter  of  Yez- 
digird  III,  the  last  of  the  Sasanians.  According  to  Per- 
sian history  as  set  forth  by  Firdeusi,  in  the  Shah  Nameh, 
this  second  national  dynasty  was  descended  from  the 
earlier  mythical  dynasty  which  has  partially  been  iden- 
tified with  the  Achaemenians  of  the  heroic  period.  The 
story  is  that  the  Persian  princess  was  carried  away  to 

128 


THE  GREAT  SLAUGHTER 

Medina  as  a  prisoner  of  war,  where  Omar  (may  his  name 
be  cursed !)  ordered  her  to  be  sold  as  a  slave  but  AH  inter- 
vened and  gave  her  to  his  son  Hosein.  And,  similarly, 
the  Persians  trace  the  ancestry  of  the  Safevi  dynasty, 
which  restored  the  independence  of  Persia  in  1499,  to 
the  seventh  Imam,  Musa  Kazim.  Thus  the  ceremonies 
of  Moharrem  are,  it  is  true,  a  rite  of  the  religion  which 
took  the  place  of  their  own  more  ancient  one.  But  they 
are  at  the  same  time  an  assertion  of  national  pride  against 
the  Arab  conqueror  and  against  those  Turkish  and  Afghan 
neighbours  who  have  so  often  encroached  on  Persian  soil. 
Time,  of  course,  has  a  way  of  softening  religious  dissen- 
sions. When,  however,  they  are  so  intricately  entangled 
with  others  of  the  sentiments  that  lie  deepest  in  the  heart 
of  man,  it  is  not  safe  to  count  too  much  on  the  unity  of 
the  Moslem  world.  At  any  rate,  the  Persians  still  piously 
chant  in  Moharrem: 

"The  black-hearted  people  who  slew  the  offspring  of  the 
Prophet  with  malice: 

"They  claim  to  belong  to  the  religion,  but  they  murder  the 
lord  of  the  religion." 

in 

Although  it  had  for  several  days  been  patent  that  some- 
thing was  in  the  air,  the  first  positive  sign  of  it  we  had  in 
our  own  house.  Then  the  servants,  who  had  unaccount- 
ably been  going  about  with  their  clothes  unbuttoned  at 
the  throat,  announced  that  as  it  was  the  day  of  the  Little 
Slaughter,  otherwise  the  seventh  of  Moharrem,  they 
would  be  obliged  to  do  as  little  work  as  possible.  This,  I 
must  confess,  seemed  no  new  resolution  in  those  pictur- 

129 


PERSIAN  MINIATURES 

esque  underlings,  no  one  of  whom  ever  gave  us  the  im- 
pression that  he  would  die  of  overwork.  But  an  inquisitive 
ear  could  not  help  being  caught  by  that  name  of  Little 
Slaughter— which  I  believe  is  the  anniversary  of  the  day 
when  the  Imam  Hosein  and  his  party  were  turned  aside 
from  Kufa  by  the  chief  Al  Hurr. 

I  afterward  realised  that  if  I  had  known  Persian,  or  if 
I  had  been  an  older  resident  of  Hamadan,  I  might  have 
seen  a  great  deal  more  than  I  did.  But  there  was  some- 
thing even  for  the  most  ignorant  newcomer  to  see  on  the 
tenth  of  Mobarrem.  This  greatest  anniversary  of  the 
Persian  year  is  known  as  the  Great  Slaughter.  And  it  is 
commemorated  throughout  the  country  by  a  species  of 
Passion  Play  which  has  a  more  familiar  counterpart  in  the 
Easter  celebrations  of  the  Greek  Church,  as  in  the  dramatic 
representations  of  Oberammergau  and  other  parts  of  the 
Catholic  world.  In  Tehran  and  elsewhere  theatres  exist, 
or  are  improvised,  in  which  the  tragedy  of  the  Family  of 
the  Tent,  as  the  Persians  name  the  heroic  campers  at 
Kerbela,  is  acted  out  with  more  than  historical  detail. 
I  presume  some  such  thing  might  have  been  found  in 
Hamadan,  though  no  one  of  our  colony  had  ever  seen  it. 
One  of  our  number,  indeed,  was  highly  scandalised  that 
Christians  should  betray  any  interest  in  proceedings  so 
heathenish.  We  did,  however,  see  something.  And  in  its 
way  it  was  something  stranger  and  more  picturesque  than 
I  had  ever  seen  before. 

We  saw  it  from  the  roof  of  a  building  that  had  been 
erected  for  a  "movie"  theatre!  The  inner  workings  of 
that  theatre  remained  immovable  during  the  whole  of 
my  sojourn  in  Hamadan;  but  no  film  that  has  since  been 
exhibited  there  can  have  come  up  to  the  setting  and  the 

130 


THE  GREAT  SLAUGHTER 

scene  on  which  we,  in  company  with  not  a  few  of  the  peo- 
ple of  the  country,  looked  down.  Immediately  below  us 
ran  ^horizontal  street,  opening  in  front  of  our  high  gallery 
into  an  irregular  square.  The  right  side  of  it  was  bounded 
by  a  series  of  broken  vaults  and  arches  which  go  by  the 
name  of  Masjid-i-Shah — being,  some  one  told  me,  all 
that  is  left  of  a  mosque  begun  there  about  a  hundred  years 
ago  by  Fat'h  AH  Shah.  The  mud  walls  of  the  Bazaar 
enclosed  the  rest  of  the  uneven  amphitheatre.  Behind  it, 
bearing  rather  toward  the  left,  rose  a  few  tiers  of  flat  adobe 
roofs,  while  farther  away  toward  the  right,  where  the  river 
made  a  hollow  in  the  clay-coloured  town,  we  could  see  in 
the  northwest  the  white  glitter  of  the  plain.  There  was 
snow,  too,  on  every  projecting  bit  of  roof  or  masonry, 
contrasting  vividly  with  the  dark  masses  of  spectators 
that  lined  all  the  nearer  roofs  and  the  outer  edges  of  the 
square.  This  note  of  black  and  white  was  decoratively 
repeated  by  groups  of  women  who  stood  together  on  two 
mounds  facing  the  square  and  at  two  points  on  either  side 
of  it,  the  white  triangles  of  their  veils  and  the  white  fillets 
encircling  their  crowns  cut  out  against  the  black  or  dark 
blue  of  their  loose  domino.  And  there  were  plenty  of 
white  turbans  above  dark  robes  to  carry  the  impression 
a  little  farther. 

I  do  not  mean  to  pretend  that  there  was  any  lack  of 
colour  on  this  open-air  stage  roofed  with  so  intense  a  blue. 
But  what  was  most  striking  about  the  look  of  the  crowd 
was  its  general  soberness  of  tone.  There  were  none  of  the 
brilliant  reds  and  yellows  which  the  Turks  love.  The  pre- 
vailing black  and  brown  of  the  men's  costumes  was  varied 
by  dull  blues  and  greens,  with  only  an  occasional  touch  of 
russet,  buff,  or  salmon.  All  the  more  conspicuous,  there- 


PERSIAN  MINIATURES 

fore,  was  a  fantastic  little  spangled  green  pavillion  that 
stood  at  the  rear  of  the  rising  stage.  This  was  supposed 
to  represent  Damascus,  or  Yezid's  palace  therein.  A 
less  ornamental  red  tent  downstage  at  the  right  was  at 
once  Kufa  and  the  camp  of  the  villains  Amr  and  Shimr. 
In  the  centre  and  toward  the  left  of  the  stage  were  pitched 
two  smaller  white  tents,  for  the  camp  of  Kerbela. 

All  this  made  enough  to  look  at,  in  the  clear  Persian 
sunlight,  till  a  strange  object  suddenly  advanced  into  sight 
behind  the  ruins  of  the  mosque.  It  looked  like  a  furled 
standard,  horizontally  striped  with  brilliant  bands  of 
colour,  and  its  tall  staff  was  surmounted  by  an  upright 
hand  of  brass.  According  to  Habib  this  hand  commemo- 
rated the  mutilated  one  of  the  Imam  Abu  Fazl,  though 
Masudi  says  in  "The  Meadows  of  Gold"  that  Shimr  cut 
off  the  right  hand  of  Hosein  as  well  as  his  head.  And  I 
believe  a  hand  is  a  common  symbol  of  the  Holy  Family 
of  Islam,  whose  five  chief  members  are  Mohammed, 
Fatma,  AH,  Hasan,  and  Hosein.  At  any  rate,  this  pic- 
turesque furled  standard,  which  is  not  meant  to  be  un- 
furled, being  merely  a  sort  of  circular  gonfalon,  presently 
reached  the  end  of  the  street  below  us.  It  was  followed 
by  a  quantity  of  decorative  banners  on  shorter  staves. 
Some  of  them  were  black,  others  were  fringed  and  in- 
scribed with  Arabic  letters,  while  two  triangular  oriflammes 
were  made  to  stand  straight  out  by  being  fastened  together 
at  the  point.  Behind  the  banners  clattered  a  cavalcade 
of  men  at  arms,  some  in  scarlet,  others  carrying  long,  slen- 
der lances.  And  after  them  marched  a  company  of  men 
on  foot.  What  was  most  unusual  about  the  latter  was 
not  that  they  wore  black,  but  that  they  were  bare-headed. 
For  to  uncover  the  hair  in  public  is  the  last  thing  for  a 

132 


THE  GREAT  SLAUGHTER 

Mohammedan  to  do.  These  beat  their  bare  breasts  in 
unison,  as  they  marched.  Which  instantly  made  me 
recognise,  in  the  irregular  measured  thud  of  right  hands  on 
left  shoulder  blades,  the  curious  sound  of  clapping  I  had 
heard  behind  the  lighted  paper  windows  of  the  mosques. 

This  procession  passed  under  us  and  took  its  place  at 
Kerbela,  on  the  left  side  of  the  square.  Next  there  ap- 
peared a  band  of  water  carriers,  each  with  a  goatskin 
slung  across  his  back  and  swinging  in  his  hand  a  hollow 
gourd  or  an  oblong  brass  bowl.  The  patron  of  this  guild 
is  the  standard  bearer  Abbas,  the  Imam's  uncle,  who  was 
killed  in  a  desperate  attempt  to  bring  to  the  beleaguered 
women  and  children  at  Kerbela  a  little  water  from  the 
Euphrates.  Behind  the  water  carriers  trotted  a  car- 
avan of  travellers  from  Medina,  on  mule  back.  The 
most  notable  thing  about  them  was  their  luggage,  con- 
sisting of  funny  little  painted  trunks  and  the  most  enviable 
saddlebags.  They  took  their  places  immediately  below 
us,  facing  the  square.  And  after  them  came  more  banners 
and  flagellants.  Their  leader,  who  bore  the  tall  furled 
and  banded  gonfalon,  jerked  it  up  and  down  in  a  sort  of 
rhythm,  and  the  flagellants  hopped  in  time  to  it,  beating 
their  breasts  and  chanting  "Hosein  ah!"  This  commo- 
tion so  alarmed  one  of  the  mules  of  the  caravan  that  he 
upset  his  unlucky  rider,  together  with  his  boxes  and 
saddlebags,  into  a  sea  of  mud. 

There  was  quite  an  interval  before  a  larger  and  more 
picturesque  procession  made  its  appearance.  It  emerged 
from  the  Bazaar  at  the  left,  as  if  to  emphasize  its  distinc- 
tion from  the  party  of  Hosein,  and  for  greater  pomp  it  was 
preceded  by  two  lines  of  gendarmes.  This  touch  had  a 
special  savour  for  some  of  us,  in  that  those  gendarmes  were 

133 


PERSIAN  MINIATURES 

the  creation  of  our  own  compatriot  Mr.  W.  M.  Shuster, 
ex-Treasurer-General  of  Persia.  This  more  magnificent 
Syrian  procession  flaunted  several  furled  gonfalons  of  the 
brass  hand,  and  many  more  banners  and  oriflammes. 
They  were  followed  by  the  cavaliers  and  lancers  of  Amr 
ibn  Saad,  and  by  a  caravan  of  camels.  The  riders  of  the 
latter  were  dressed  in  the  Syrian  cloak  and  scarf,  while  the 
trappings  of  their  beasts  were  far  more  gorgeous  than 
anything  displayed  by  the  humble  mules  from  Medina. 
And  next  appeared  a  most  mysterious  ornament  or  emblem 
that  advanced  glittering  above  the  heads  of  the  crowd. 
On  top  of  the  pole  that  carried  it  was  a  cross  bar,  and  at 
either  end  of  the  cross  bar  some  little  domed  and  pin- 
nacled edifice  of  brass,  while  between  them  stood  upright, 
its  point  nodding  forward  as  if  by  its  own  weight,  what 
might  have  been  a  sword  of  slenderest  steel.  What  this 
signified,  if  anything,  no  one  could  tell  me.  But  I  forgot 
to  wonder  about  it  when  I  saw  who  edged  next  into  sight, 
bare-headed  like  the  breast-beaters,  but  dressed  in  white 
smocks,  commemorating  the  shroud  worn  by  Hosein  at 
Kerbela,  that  were  streaked  scarlet  with  their  own  blood. 
They  marched  sideways  in  two  long  lines,  the  left  hand  of 
each  in  the  belt  of  his  neighbour,  holding  in  his  right  a 
sword  with  which  he  slashed  his  own  head.  A  few  of  those 
extraordinary  flagellants  I  had  seen  before,  in  Constanti- 
nople. But  there  it  was  in  an  enclosed  courtyard,  at  dusk, 
among  an  unfriendly  people.  Here  in  the  brilliant  sun- 
light of  their  own  country,  pressed  by  their  friends  and 
neighbours,  chanting  so  hoarsely  after  that  mysterious 
thing  of  brass  and  steel  that  glittered  above  the  dark 
caps  of  the  crowd,  they  made  an  effect  wilder  and  more 
frenetic  than  anything  I  have  ever  seen.  Many  of  them 


THE  GREAT  SLAUGHTER 

were  no  more  than  boys.  And  a  few  of  them  carried 
babies  in  their  arms,  whose  little  heads  they  had  scratched 
in  one  or  two  places  to  expiate  the  blood  of  the  martyred 
Hosein.  Such  wounds,  the  Persians  say,  are  not  as  other 
wounds;  for  the  Prophet  miraculously  heals  them.  I 
must  add  that  several  of  the  men  wore  white  skull  caps, 
while  others  seemed  to  take  care  how  far  they  swung  their 
swords.  Even  so,  however,  those  white  smocks  were 
gruesomely  reddened,  and  for  days  afterward  bandaged 
heads  walked  about  Hamadan. 

The  banners  gathered  in  a  mass  of  colour  below  us  at 
the  right,  near  the  red  tent  of  Kufa.  The  flagellants  made 
for  Kerbela,  forming  a  great  ring  in  front  of  Hosein's  tent 
at  the  left.  The  camels  from  Damascus  ranged  in  front 
of  the  mules  from  Medina.  As  for  the  lancers  of  the 
conqueror  of  Egypt,  they  disappointed  me  by  curveting 
out  of  sight  behind  the  ruined  vaults.  But  they  soon 
reappeared  upstage  through  an  arch.  So  the  arena  was 
now  completely  set.  And  I  fear  that  many  things  passed 
upon  it  which  escaped  our  eyes.  One  reason  was  that 
we  were,  after  all,  rather  far  away — as  it  were  among  the 
gallery  gods.  Another  was  that  in  spite  of  policemen 
armed  with  whips  and  walking  barricades  made  up  of 
two  men  and  a  long  pole,  the  spectators  incessantly  en- 
croached upon  the  stage;  and  what  looked  like  a  friendly 
conversation  between  two  citizens  of  Hamadan  might  really 
be  a  proud  parley  between  Hosein  and  Amr  of  Egypt. 
Presently,  however,  there  took  place  an  unmistakable  piece 
of  action,  when  the  hosts  of  Syria  charged  those  of  Arabia. 
I  must  confess  that  my  eye  was  not  sharp  enough  to  detect 
any  casualties.  But  when  the  two  armies  had  withdrawn 
to  their  respective  sides  of  the  field,  I  suddenly  discovered 

135 


PERSIAN  MINIATURES 

a  lifeless  body  lying  on  the  ground  not  far  from  the  central 
tent. 

An  Arab  hurried  out  of  the  tent  of  Hosein  and  knelt 
beside  the  corpse,  followed  by  a  woman  who  burst  into 
loud  sobs.  Who  could  the  dead  man  be?  Was  he  the 
standard  bearer  Abbas?  Was  he  Ali  Akbar,  the  Imam's 
son,  who  also  lost  his  life  in  an  attempt  to  get  water  from 
the  Euphrates?  Was  he  the  young  Kasim,  Hosein's 
nephew,  whose  story  is  one  of  the  most  affecting  incidents 
in  the  Persian  legend?  Kasim  was,  I  believe,  the  fifth 
to  volunteer  for  the  perilous  adventure  of  bringing  water 
from  the  river,  during  those  two  burning  days  under 
the  Mesopotamian  sun.  He  was  only  sixteen  years  old, 
and  both  his  mother  and  his  uncle  did  their  best  to  dis- 
suade him.  But  the  matter  was  finally  settled  by  the  dis- 
covery of  a  letter  or  will  of  his  father,  the  Caliph  Hasan, 
prophesying  for  him  the  glory  of  martyrdom  and  directing 
that  he  was  first  to  marry  his  cousin  Zobeida.  The  wed- 
ding accordingly  took  place  on  the  battlefield.  But  if 
it  took  place  at  Masjid-i-Shah  I  saw  nothing  of  it — unless 
a  second  encounter  between  the  two  troops  of  cavaliers 
was  the  attack  which  broke  up  the  marriage  festivities 
and  cost  the  life  of  the  young  bridegroom. 

At  the  close  of  this  melee  the  Syrians  held  the  field. 
Whereupon  they  set  on  fire  the  central  tent,  which  was 
supposed  to  shelter  the  Imam's  Persian  princess,  his 
sister  Zeineb,  the  young  widow  Zobeida,  the  widow  of 
Hasan,  and  other  women  and  children.  This  sudden 
blaze  in  the  centre  of  the  square,  made  more  spectacular 
by  a  quantity  of  straw  concealed  in  the  burning  tent, 
was  the  signal  for  a  passionate  outburst  ot  weeping  from 
the  crowd.  There  had  been  tears  and  sobs  before,  es- 


THE  GREAT  SLAUGHTER 

pecially  when  the  corpse  was  left  on  the  ground  at  the 
end  of  the  first  brush  between  the  lancers.  But  now  there 
arose  so  general  a  sound  of  grief  that  one  could  not  help 
being  impressed.  Near  us  sat  a  Persian  lady  who  had  first 
been  extremely  scandalised  by  the  loose  way  in  which  the 
men  and  women  of  our  party  sat  together,  and  who  then 
had  shown  every  sign  of  uneasiness  lest  her  skirts  be  de- 
filed by  those  of  the  missionary  next  her — the  more  so 
as  a  wet  Christian  is  far  more  impure  than  a  dry  one. 
This  evidently  orthodox  person  was  one  of  the  first  to 
shed  tears  over  the  perils  of  the  Family  of  the  Tent.  They 
were  real  tears,  because  I  saw  them  splash  down  her 
cheeks.  She  was  not  so  orthodox,  I  must  add,  but  what 
she  lifted  her  thick  veil  in  order  to  see  what  was  going 
on.  And  now  not  only  did  her  tears  shower  anew,  but 
she  beat  her  breast,  tore  her  hair,  and  very  nearly  jerked 
her  veil  off  altogether.  Even  so  impure  an  unbeliever  as 
myself  could  not  help  feeling  touched  at  such  evidence 
that  a  tragedy  over  twelve  hundred  years  old  could  still 
work  so  powerfully  upon  the  hearts  of  those  who  beheld 
it.  Then  the  weeping  lady  suddenly  dried  her  tears  and 
demanded  of  another  lady  in  a  black  domino,  rather 
crossly,  why  she  didn't  cry.  And  having  received  what 
was  no  doubt  a  satisfactory  answer,  the  tears  began  to 
rain  again  out  of  her  own  better  disciplined  eyes.  At 
that,  I  must  admit,  I,  who  am  naturally  of  a  suspicious 
nature,  began  to  dart  sceptical  glances  about  me.  I 
remembered  that  at  the  theatre  of  the  Passion  Play  in 
Tehran  there  is  a  functionary  known  as  the  Auxiliary  of 
Tears.  I  went  so  far  as  to  ask  myself  if  there  could  be 
onions  in  any  of  the  innumerable  handkerchiefs  I  saw. 
But  it  opportunely  came  back  to  me  that  this  was  at 

137 


PERSIAN  MINIATURES 

once  a  religious  and  dramatic  performance,  in  a  land  where 
other  dramatic  performances  do  not  exist,  that  I  myself 
had  more  than  once  nearly  drowned  in  the  tears  of  my 
own  compatriots,  shed  over  no  greater  a  matter,  for  in- 
stance, than  "The  Music  Master,"  and  that  if  I  chose 
that  moment  to  probe  the  dark  subject  of  female  lamen- 
tations I  would  miss  what  was  going  forward  in  the  square 
of  Masjid-i-Shah. 

The  flames  of  the  tent  were  put  out  by  the  water  car- 
riers, who  drew  from  their  goatskins  the  water  of  the 
Euphrates  which  Hosein  and  his  companions  had  so  bit- 
terly lacked.  In  the  meantime  the  flagellants  in  black 
made  a  circle  about  the  place  of  the  tent,  beating  their 
breasts  more  vehemently  than  ever,  striking  their  heads 
in  despair,  and  showering  on  their  heads  what  remained 
of  the  half-burnt  straw  of  the  tent,  as  well  as  fresh-chopped 
straw  from  a  supply  they  had — representing  the  sands  of 
Mesopotamia. 

By  the  time  the  last  scene  was  ready  to  take  place  the 
crowd  had  burst  all  bounds,  filling  the  amphitheatre 
with  an  uneasy  mass  of  dark  felt  caps.  Through  it  the 
flagellants  in  black  slowly  made  their  way,  led  by  the 
mysterious  brass  emblem,  to  the  standards  massed  near 
the  red  tent  of  Amr  ibn  Saad.  The  flagellants  in  white 
followed  them,  with  their  flying  guard  of  pointed  ori- 
flammes.  Then  the  scarlet  lancers  and  the  Syrian  camels 
— one  of  them,  splendidly  caparisoned,  mounted  by  a 
personage  in  green,  and  others  bearing  aloft  the  captive 
women  and  children  from  Medina,  with  wooden  triangles 
about  their  necks — performed  a  serpentine  progress 
through  the  crowd  from  Kufa  to  Damascus.  At  Ober- 
ammergau,  of  course,  there  never  would  have  been  such 

138 


THE  GREAT  SLAUGHTER 

disorder  or  properties  so  primitive.  But  at  Oberammer- 
gau,  with  all  its  precision  and  solemnity,  there  never  could 
be  a  spectacle  so  picturesque.  Back  from  Damascus 
to  Kufa  the  slow  pageant  wound,  this  time  with  white 
biers  borne  on  men's  shoulders  between  the  horsemen  and 
the  camels.  And  so,  amid  the  sobs  and  outcries  of  the 
faithful,  the  players  made  their  circuitous  way  into  the 
press  of  the  Bazaar. 

IV 

How  many  times  this  confused  and  fragmentary  ver- 
sion of  the  Passion  Play  was  repeated,  I  cannot  say.  I 
did  not  happen  to  go  back  to  Masjid-i-Shah  until  Mo- 
harrem  was  over.  But  the  next  day  I  saw  in  the  street 
another  procession  that  was  a  thing  to  remember.  Every 
quarter  of  the  town — corresponding  to  the  mediaeval 
parishes — has  its  own  pageant  of  Mobarrem,  got  up  by 
public  subscription,  by  the  generosity  of  one  well-to-do 
citizen,  or  even  by  that  of  citizens  no  more  of  this  world. 
There  is  consequently  great  rivalry  between  the  different 
processions,  and  their  routes  have  to  be  mapped  out  with 
care  lest  two  of  them  chance  to  meet.  In  that  unhappy 
case,  since  neither  will  yield  the  right  of  way,  the  blood 
of  the  faithful  is  more  than  likely  to  flow  anew. 

Our  quarter,  or  the  quarter  nearest  our  extramural 
suburb,  is  named  Kolapa.  What  that  name  may  mean, 
I  don't  know.  Perhaps  nothing.  At  any  rate,  Habib 
thought  it  necessary  for  me  to  inspect  the  cortege  of 
Kolapa,  in  preference  to  others  farther  afield.  I  saw  it, 
accordingly,  in  surroundings  perhaps  not  quite  so  theat- 
rical as  the  square  of  Masjid-i-Shah,  yet  characteristic 
enough.  These  surroundings  were  those  of  a  cemetery, 

139 


PERSIAN  MINIATURES 

lying  on  uneven  ground  and  encircled  by  the  mud  walls 
and  houses  of  the  town.  A  Persian  cemetery  is  always 
to  be  recognised  by  its  flat,  haphazard  stones,  without 
shrub  or  tree  for  beauty.  They  say,  alas,  that  cemeteries 
may  also  be  recognised  by  other  senses  than  that  of  sight. 
For  in  Persia  no  regulations  exist  as  to  the  depth  of  graves, 
and  your  Iranian  is  no  man  to  dig  deeper  than  he  need. 
Which  does  not  prevent  him  from  collecting  the  frozen 
snow  of  winter  in  hollows  among  the  graves,  and  storing 
it  in  some  convenient  dugout  between  them  for  the 
sherbets  of  summer.  I  discovered  no  such  arrange- 
ments in  this  particular  cemetery;  but  the  waters  of  a 
jub,  an  irrigation  channel,  out  of  which  no  one  ever 
hesitates  to  drink,  ran  merrily  along  its  lower  side.  On 
its  highest  point,  in  suggestive  proximity  to  the  graves, 
stood  a  gallows.  At  that  moment  no  highwayman  hap- 
pened to  be  swinging  from  it — to  the  regret  of  Habib, 
who  coveted  for  me  the  most  characteristic  impressions  of 
his  native  town. 

To  that  end  he  escorted  me  to  the  roof  of  a  public  bath 
encroaching  upon  one  edge  of  the  cemetery.  No  house 
in  Hamadan  is  a  skyscraper;  but  as  baths  like  to  burrow 
underground,  their  roofs  are  not  too  difficult  to  reach. 
This  roof  we  found  in  the  possession  of  a  company  of 
ladies,  who  looked  a  little  doubtful  at  my  appearance  in 
their  midst.  However,  those  of  them  who  occupied  the 
highest  point  of  vantage  at  once  recognised  that  it  was 
their  duty  to  retire  in  my  favour.  And  in  the  face  of 
so  evident  a  ruling  of  public  opinion  what  could  I  do 
but  scramble  up  in  their  stead,  accept  a  basket  which  a 
youth  handed  me  to  sit  on,  and  endow  him  with  the  ridic- 
ulously excessive  tip  of  some  two  cents. 

140 


THE  GREAT  SLAUGHTER 

From  the  fact  that  this  youth  wore  nothing  but  one 
striped  towel,  which  he  seemed  to  find  entirely  adequate 
protection  against  the  eager  and  the  nipping  air  of  a 
winter  climate  of  Colorado  or  the  Engadine,  I  took  him 
for  an  attendant  of  the  bath  beneath  us.  His  business 
among  the  ladies  on  the  roof  was  to  turn  over  with  his 
bare  feet  a  quantity  of  manure  spread  out  there  in  the 
sun  to  dry,  and  to  regulate  the  unfathomable  operations 
of  a  chimney  covered  with  an  Ali  Baba  jar  of  blue  glaze. 
Every  so  often  he  would  remove  this  jar,  by  means  of 
the  handles  conveniently  encircling  its  neck.  Between 
times  he  held  impassioned  conversations  with  his  col- 
leagues below,  through  a  hole  in  a  dome  where  a  glass 
bull's  eye  had  once  been.  Out  of  it  escaped  a  lazy  cloud 
of  steam  into  the  clear  air. 

Other  youths  appeared  from  time  to  time,  offering  for 
sale  mysterious  condiments  which  the  ladies  were  more 
eager  to  taste  than  I.  One  such  dainty  looked  like  a  mess 
of  boiled  beets,  wrapped  in  the  grandfather  of  all  filthy 
rags.  Another  was  a  species  of  macaroon.  The  favourite 
was  a  collection  of  poisonous  looking  candies,  which  the 
ladies  fed  incessantly  to  babies  in  funny  little  round 
spangled  caps.  As  for  the  babies,  toward  whom  their 
mothers  otherwise  exhibited  undisguised  affection,  they 
did  not  curl  up  and  die.  On  the  contrary,  they  crowed 
and  waved  their  arms  and  legs,  quite  like  the  most  scien- 
tifically brought  up  babies  in  the  world,  and  tried  to  jump 
off  the  roof  of  the  bath  in  order  to  join  their  papas  on  the 
opposite  side  of  the  street.  These  gentlemen  sat  com- 
fortably on  their  heels  in  the  sun,  engaged  in  the  pleasures 
of  The  Chase  or  smoking  thick  straight  pipes,  and  no 
doubt  exchanging  scandalous  opinions  with  regard  to 

141 


PERSIAN  MINIATURES 

the  not  too  rigorously  veiled  beauties  perched  on  the 
roof  of  the  bath.  I  had  heard  terrible  stories  of  the 
fanaticism  of  the  Persians  during  Moharrem,  and  had  in 
fact  been  rather  struck  by  their  unwillingness  to  allow 
me  to  see  the  inside  of  a  bath  or  a  mosque.  Conse- 
quently it  pleased  me  not  a  little  to  discover  these  good 
Hamadanis  so  human  and  friendly,  and  so  disposed  to 
let  both  me  and  my  camera  into  what  had  the  air  of  being 
a  large  family  party. 

The  procession,  when  at  last  it  appeared,  was  very 
much  like  the  processions  of  Masjid-i-Shah.  This  time, 
however,  I  enjoyed  the  advantage  of  seeing  it  very  much 
nearer  at  hand,  if  in  a  less  picturesque  perspective.  And 
it  contained  several  new  and  interesting  features.  The 
first  sign  of  it  was  one  of  those  files  of  small  boys  carrying 
a  little  banner  and  a  hand,  beating  their  breasts  and 
chanting  shrilly  the  names  of  the  martyred  Imams.  Be- 
hind them  rose  a  sound  of  deeper  voices,  intermingled 
with  a  barbaric  blare  of  brass.  Then  from  the  narrow 
street  debouching  upon  the  cemetery  emerged  two  long 
lines  of  Mr.  Shuster's  gendarmes  and  thirty-two  pairs  of 
horses.  Some  were  mounted,  others  were  led  by  grooms; 
and  the  high  saddles  of  the  latter  were  covered  with  hand- 
some stuffs  and  embroideries.  One  fine  stallion — a  mare, 
for  that  matter,  is  rarely  seen  on  the  streets  in  Persia, 
and  a  gelding  almost  never — was  caparisoned  in  black, 
being  the  charger  of  Hosein.  Next  came  the  three  kinds 
of  banners  we  had  seen  the  day  before.  The  staves  of  a 
few  were  tipped  by  the  symbolic  hand  of  the  Holy  Family, 
those  of  most  ending  in  a  spherical  gilt  cone.  There  fol- 
lowed the  more  enigmatic  metal  emblem  at  the  head  of 
the  flagellants.  As  borne  by  the  men  of  Kolapa  this  dis- 

142 


THE  GREAT  SLAUGHTER 

played  no  little  brass  temples,  but  two  thin  steel  blades 
lower  than  the  one  in  the  centre,  all  three  of  them  being 
mounted  on  flat  pear-shaped  bases  of  steel  which  were 
chased  with  Arabic  lettering;  and  from  the  bar  supporting 
them  hung  a  quantity  of  shawls  and  embroideries  of  price. 
With  regard  to  this  wonderful  emblem  Habib  gave  me  to 
understand  something  about  Ali's  famous  sword  of  Zul- 
fikar,  saying  something  also  about  Mohammed  and  Ho- 
sein.  But  between  my  lack  of  tongues  and  Habib's  lack 
of  letters,  I  do  not  pretend  to  explain  the  true  symbolism 
of  those  nodding  swords,  whose  points  were  weighted 
with  tassels. 

What  came  next  was  an  object  I  had  not  seen  before. 
It  was  a  staff  swathed  in  white  gauze  and  white  wax 
flowers,  on  top  of  which  were  three  curved  metal  prongs 
sustaining  three  small  winged  and  crowned  cherubs. 
After  them  marched  an  assembly  of  Seids,  descendants 
of  the  Prophet,  rhythmically  striking  their  green  turbans. 
Then  followed  two  companies  of  flagellants,  chanting  a 
wild  antiphone  out  of  which  I  could  distinguish  only  the 
names  of  the  Imams.  There  were  no  men  in  white  this 
time.  All  were  in  black,  beating  their  breasts  and  throw- 
ing handfuls  of  chopped  straw  over  their  bare  heads. 
Many  of  them,  however,  despite  the  keen  December  air, 
were  stripped  to  the  waist.  And  they  gave  me  an  ex- 
cellent opportunity  to  study  the  secrets  of  a  Persian  coif- 
fure. I  had  noticed  how  seldom  any  hair  was  visible  on 
a  forehead  that  wore  a  kola,  and  how  often  the  wearers  of 
that  tall  felt  cap  affected  the  shaven  neck  which  is  not 
unknown  in  our  own  part  of  the  world.  I  now  discovered 
that  most  of  them  had  shaved  a  wide  strip  all  the  way 
from  their  foreheads  to  their  necks,  leaving  only  the  long 


PERSIAN  MINIATURES 

fc 

side  locks  which  are  the  pride  of  a  Persian  dandy.  Others 
exhibited  a  wide  half  moon  of  naked  skin,  sweeping 
around  the  temples  and  the  crown,  or  a  great  cowl  that 
left  nothing  of  their  hair  but  a  fringe  like  a  Japanese 
doll's;  while  the  heads  of  a  few  were  shorn  completely 
bare. 

The  second  part  of  the  procession  was  led  by  a  band  of 
buglers  and  trumpeters,  whose  copper  trumpets  were 
longer  than  any  trombone  I  ever  saw  in  the  triumphal 
march  of  "Aida."  And  what  sounds  burst  from  them! 
There  followed  a  squadron  of  lancers,  and  a  small  boy  in 
green  on  a  horse  with  black  trappings.  This  small  boy 
impersonated,  according  to  my  companion,  the  young 
Imam  AH  Asghar,  who  was  taken  captive  to  Damascus. 
And  behind  him  were  borne,  on  two  ornamental  biers, 
the  head  and  the  headless  trunk  of  the  martyred  Hosein. 
At  sight  of  these  amazingly  cadaverous  relics,  which 
seemed  to  be  made  of  wax  or  papier  mache,  the  spectators 
fell  into  their  wildest  tears  and  sobs. 

So  many  features  of  the  rest  of  this  part  of  the  pageant 
were  new  to  me'that  I  cannot  be  quite  sure  of  their  order. 
But  I  saw  a  white  box  of  some  kind,  surmounted  by  an 
image  of  the  dove  that  flew  from  Kerbela  to  Medina  to 
tell  the  Prophet  in  his  tomb  of  his  grandson's  tragic  end. 
There  was  also  a  live  white  dove,  perched  on  a  white 
litter  which  was  supposed  to  contain  the  young  widow 
Zobeida.  The  Imam's  daughter  was  impersonated  by  a 
small  boy  whose  sobs  excited  the  liveliest  sympathy. 
So  did  the  sight  of  several  other  litters,  bearing  away  to 
slavery  in  Damascus  the  unhappy  Zeineb  and  other 
women  and  children  of  the  Family  of  the  Tent.  In  me, 
however,  the  emotion  they  chiefly  excited  was  the  baser 

144 


ZOBEIDA'S  LITTER 


145 


PERSIAN  MINIATURES^ 

one  of  covetousness,  at  the  spectacle  of  the  shawls,  rugs, 
and  figured  stuffs  that  protected  the  travellers  from  the 
sun. 

Behind  the  palanquins  of  the  Holy  Family  appeared  a 
series  of  quaint  floats,  which  were  generally  no  more  than 
slabs  of  wood  carried  on  the  heads  of  one  or  two  men. 
One  of  the  first  of  them  supported  a  rocking  cradle,  per- 
haps that  of  the  child  killed  in  Hosein's  arms.  On  an- 
other stood  a  small  lion,  cousin,  german  to  the  friend  of 
Androcles,  who  befriended  the  defenders  of  Kerbela. 
He  bent  over  a  wounded  Arab  and  attempted  in  none  too 
leonine  a  manner  to  pull  an  arrow  out  of  his  breast. 
The  greater  number  of  the  objects  thus  borne  past  were 
more  gruesome,  being  the  mutilated  members  of  the 
lesser  martyrs.  A  pair  of  legs  would  be  represented  by  a 
pair  of  big  Russian  boots,  lying  heel  to  heel.  Other 
more  realistic  human  parts  would  miraculously  twitch 
as  you  watched  them — in  response,  I  discovered,  to  the 
jerking  of  a  secret  string.  But  once  in  a  while  the  move- 
ment of  an  eyelid  or  of  a  lip  betrayed  the  fact  that  the 
corpse  was  a  boy  with  part  of  his  body  concealed.  And 
in  front  of  many  of  the  dismembered  trunks  a  head  was 
borne  on  a  pike — too  small  to  look  very  lifelike,  but  from 
the  necks  of  which  drops  of  some  sanguine  liquid  dripped 
on  the  heads  and  hands  of  those  carrying  the  pikes. 

Among  the  floats,  one  that  interested  me  not  least — 
though  perhaps  it  was  intended  to  represent  an  open  litter 
of  the  kind  you  see  on  Persian  journeys — contained,  if 
you  please,  two  youths  dressed  as  Europeans.  One  of 
them,  in  a  helmet  and  a  Norfolk  jacket  which  must  once 
have  come  out  of  some  cupboard  in  our  colony,  held  a 
small  spyglass  with  which  he  would  intently  search  the 

146 


THE  GREAT  SLAUGHTER 

horizon,  every  now  and  then  clapping  his  hand  to  his  head 
in  a  far  from  European  manner.  The  other,  in  whom  it 
required  some  imagination  to  see  a  woman,  was  spectacled 
like  a  missionary  of  the  old  school;  and  he  held  a  brass 
barber's  bowl,  deeply  nicked  on  one  side,  in  which  lay 
one  of  those  small  bleeding  heads.  The  legend  of  these 
Europeans  has  many  variations.  The  one  I  heard  in 
Hamadan  was  that  the  wicked  Caliph  Yezid  ordered  the 
Dutch  ambassador  at  his  court — a  Dutch  ambassador,  at 
Damascus,  in  68 1! — to  cut  off  Hosein's  head.  This  the 
ambassador  refused  to  do,  and  thereupon  embraced  the 
true  faith  as  professed  by  the  Shiites.  When  this  scene 
is  acted  out  at  Masjid-i-Shah,  the  Europeans  are  dressed 
after  their  conversion  in  Oriental  robes  and  borne  off  in 
high  splendour.  Another  version  has  it  that  the  Firengi 
ambassador  tried  to  obtain  terms  for  the  Family  of 
the  Tent,  and  failing  in  his  pious  mission  renounced  his 
own  faith.  Still  another  represents  a  Firengi  young  wo- 
man as  travelling,  in  the  notorious  manner  of  Firengi 
young  women,  over  the  plains  of  Irak  Arabi,  and  arriving 
at  Kerbela  the  night  after  the  fatal  battle.  When  she 
prepares  to  camp  on  the  sacred  ground,  blood  oozes  out 
of  the  sand  at  every  attempt  of  her  servants  to  drive  in  a 
tent  peg ;  and  she  finally  goes  to  bed  in  Damascus.  During 
the  night  Christ  appears  to  her  in  a  dream,  telling  her  the 
tragic  story  of  the  hillock  on  which  she  tried  to  pitch 
her  tent  and  revealing  to  her  a  vision  of  the  battlefield, 
where  a  Beduin  robber  is  prowling.  The  marauder  is 
frightened  away  by  the  voice  of  Hosein,  declaring  from 
his  tomb  that  there  is  no  God  but  God.  The  tomb,  over 
which  doves  are  fluttering,  is  further  guarded  from  dese- 
cration by  a  company  consisting  of  Christ,  Mohammed, 

147 


PERSIAN  MINIATURES 

Moses,  prophets,  angels,  and  other  holy  persons.  And 
the  fair  infidel  is  so  moved  that  on  waking  up  she  at  once 
announces  her  belief  in  Islam.  But  all  these  stories 
agree  in  the  essential  fact  that  even  a  dog  of  a  Christian 
is  more  humane  and  accessible  to  the  claims  of  the  truth 
than  the  hated  Syrian  Caliph.  A  counterpart  of  this 
fact  is  the  old  proclamation  of  the  conquering  Sultans  of 
Stambul  that  the  death  of  one  Shiite  was  more  agreeable 
to  God  than  that  of  seventy  Christians.  Which  are 
matters  to  remember  in  discussing  Holy  Wars  and  the 
spread  of  Pan-Islamism. 

I  have  not  mentioned  the  grave  diggers  who  followed 
the  corpses  of  the  slain,  carrying  on  their  shoulders  their 
pointed  spades  with  a  crossbar  for  the  foot  of  the  digger. 
More  moving  to  the  spectators  was  the  train  of  captives 
near  the  end  of  the  procession.  Some  of  them  were  on 
mule  back,  and  bloody  knives  pierced  their  heads  and 
their  bodies  in  the  most  startling  fashion.  Several  of 
these  wounded  prisoners  were  urchins  of  no  more  than 
eight  or  ten,  whose  pallor  and  faintness  were  so  well 
simulated  that  a  louder  chorus  of  sobs  accompanied  them 
up  the  street.  Others  marched  afoot,  with  wooden  yokes 
of  slavery  around  their  necks;  and  mounted  lancers  in 
helmets  and  scarlet  coats  drove  them  from  behind  with 
whips.  Once  in  a  while  a  flick  of  the  lash  would  be  too 
much  like  the  real  thing,  drawing  from  the  victim  a  yell 
of  the  most  unfeigned.  The  arch-villain  of  the  piece, 
though  whether  Amr  or  Shimr  I  cannot  say,  surveyed  his 
bondmen  haughtily  from  the  rear,  riding  in  gorgeous 
Syrian  robes  between  two  files  of  liveried  attendants  and 
greeted  by  the  groans  and  derision  of  the  populace. 
And  last  of  all,  loaded  with  saddlebags  and  those  funny 

148 


149 


PERSIAN  MINIATURES 

little  painted  boxes,  ambled  the  mules  of  the  humbler 
travellers,  who  were  not  too  overcome  by  the  prospect 
of  the  miseries  that  awaited  them  at  the  hands  of  Yezid 
(may  his  name  be  cursed!)  to  exchange  the  liveliest 
salutations  with  their  friends  along  the  way. 


For  three  days  the  pageants  of  the  Great  Slaughter 
continued  to  fill  the  streets  with  clamour  and  colour  and 
weeping.  What  I  saw  as  I  strolled  about  the  town  was 
too  much  like  what  I  had  already  seen  to  bear  retelling. 
The  same  picture  was  repeated  innumerable  times  in 
every  conceivable  setting — though  always  against  the 
same  background  of  tawny  walls,  with  the  same  strange- 
ness of  gonfalon  and  oriflamme  and  nodding  emblematic 
blades,  of  lances  and  copper  trumpets,  of  black  and  scar- 
let, and  swaying  palanquins.  One  such  picture  comes 
back  to  me  the  most  vividly  because  it  was  set  on  the 
pointed  stone  arch  of  a  bridge  across  the  river.  One  of 
the  horses  in  the  procession  wore  on  his  bridle  a  fantastic 
rufT  of  white  peacocks'  feathers,  rising  above  the  head  of 
the  rider.  And  somewhere  behind  him  a  boy  kneeled 
on  one  of  the  floats  two  men  were  carrying,  his  uplifted 
hands  silhouetted  against  the  sky  like  the  symbol  of  a 
nation's  faith  and  pride. 

That  night  the  servants  told  us  that  there  would  be  no 
more  pageants  in  the  streets.  The  Governor  had  for- 
bidden them.  Was  it,  I  wondered,  because  a  custom 
reminiscent  of  Pilate  and  Barabbas  permits  these  passion- 
players  to  demand  of  him  the  release  of  any  prisoner  they 
choose  to  name? 


150 


X 

OLD  WINE  IN  NEW  BOTTLES 

Un  salon  de  huit  ou  on$e  personnes  aimdbles,  ou  la  conver- 
sation est  gate,  anecdotique,  et  ou  Von  prend  un  punch  leger  a 
minuit  et  demi,  est  I'endroit  du  monde  ou  je  me  trouve  le  mieux. 

Henri  Beyle:  ARMANCE 

/  said,  "I  am  out  hunting  friends,"  and  they  told  me,  with  a 
kind  of  eager  gravity,  "  You  will  find  them  .  .  " 

Jean  Kenyon  Mackenzie:  BLACK  SHEEP 


AO  do  you  fancy  that  because  we  lodge  in  mud 
houses  and  live  four  hundred,  five  hundred,  I 
don't  know  how  many  hundred  miles  from  a 
railroad,  we  have  neither  forms  nor  refinements? 
O  la!  la!     But  I  came  so  near  making  the  same  mistake 
myself  that  when,  from  one  moment  to  another,  I  packed 
my  trunk  for  Persia,  the  last  thing  it  occurred  to  me  to 
put  into  it  was  a  supply  of  visiting  cards.    Only  by  good 
luck  did  I  happen  to  think  of  a  dinner  jacket.    What, 
then,  was  my  stupefaction  in  Hamadan  to  find  myself 
launched  before  I  knew  it  upon  a  torrent  of  tea,  nibbling 
through  mountains  of  dinners,  and  trotting  about  from 
door  to  door  with  as  much  zeal  as  would  have  done  credit 
to  the  most  sedulous  man  about  town. 

This  phenomenon  is  perhaps  to  be  interpreted  in  the 
light  of  strange  tales  a  member  of  a  certain  Arctic  expedi- 


PERSIAN  MINIATURES 

r- 

tion  used  to  tell  me,  about  the  relations  that  existed  be- 
tween different  explorers  after  they  had  glared  at  each 
other  a  year  or  two  across  the  same  igloo.  Our  igloos, 
I  hasten  to  add,  are  rather  more  commodious,  and  there 
are  enough  of  them  to  afford  us  an  occasional  change  of 
air.  Still,  for  people  brought  up  to  go  to  the  theatre, 
to  listen  to  music,  to  visit  museums  and  libraries,  to 
lounge  in  clubs,  and  to  read  newspapers,  Ecbatana, 
agreeable  as  it  is,  is  after  all  a  little  barer  of  resources  than 
some  capitals.  There  is  a  post,  to  be  sure;  but  it  arrives 
only  twice  a  week — when  it  doesn't  happen  to  be  held  up 
by  storms  in  the  Caspian  or  snow  in  the  passes — and  our 
mail  is  anywhere  from  two  weeks  to  two  months  old  by 
the  time  we  get  it.  So  when  we  have  answered  our 
letters,  balanced  our  accounts,  beaten  our  servants,  and 
otherwise  dealt  with  the  estate  to  which  it  hath  pleased 
God  to  call  us,  what  else  have  we  to  do,  besides  exercising 
our  legs  and  our  horses  and  playing  at  bowls  with  our 
Swiss  friends,  but  to  entertain  or  be  entertained  by  each 
other?  And  how  should  we  do  it  otherwise  than  as  we 
used  to  do  it  at  home? 

It  is  curious,  though,  how  an  old  matter  will  renew  it- 
self in  an  unfamiliar  setting,  and  how  a  man  will  never 
tire  of  a  game  he  has  played  all  his  life,  simply  because  he 
cannot  live  long  enough  to  exhaust  its  possibilities.  The 
most  hardened  diner  out,  for  instance,  could  hardly  fail 
to  be  amused  by  a  dinner  party  whose  exact  time  could 
not  be  set.  That  is  one  charm  of  our  dinner  parties. 
For  while  Hamadan  recognises  the  existence  of  noon, 
Hamadan  sets  its  own  watch  by  the  variable  hour  of 
sunset — which  also  marks  the  boundary  between  date 
and  date.  Our  unbelieving  clocks  therefore  go  their  own 

152 


OLD  WINE  IN  NEW  BOTTLES 

gait  with  the  most  refreshing  independence,  save  for 
rare  corrections  by  a  not  too  accessible  missionary  sun- 
dial. And  a  guest  who  arrives  at  dinner  in  time  for 
the  coffee  can  always  invoke  the  slowness  of  his  watch; 
while  those  of  the  more  moral  sort  make  a  practice  of 
comparing  time-pieces  beforehand,  in  order  not  to 
appear  on  the  scene  of  action  an  hour  too  early  or  too 
late! 

There  are  other  ways  in  which  going  out  to  dinner  in 
Hamadan  is  given  a  flavour  of  its  own.  In  front  of  us 
marches  Habib,  and  perhaps  Mehm'd  Ali,  too,  bearing  a 
lily.  A  lily?  A  lily — though  not  the  same  kind  as  the 
immortal  one  borne  by  Mr.  Gilbert's  pure  young  man  in 
his  mediaeval  hand.  This  lily — or  lately  which  means 
the  same  thing — guides  our  patent-leathered  feet  past  the 
pitfalls  of  Hamadan,  being  a  candle  stuck  into  a  tin  tube, 
with  a  small  glass  globe  at  the  top  to  protect  the  flame 
from  the  winds  of  Elvend.  By  the  light  of  it  we  make  our 
way  through  dark  and  muddy  streets  to  a  sublime  porte 
recessed  in  a  semicircle  of  decorative  plaster  panels. 
At  one  end  of  this  recess  is  a  Loggia  del  Lan^i,  tenanted 
not  by  Benvenuto  Cellinis  but  by  a  dozing  beggar  or 
two,  who  do  not  fail  to  profit  by  the  time  it  takes  that 
low  wooden  door  to  open.  It  is  studded,  the  door,  with 
spikes,  bosses,  knockers,  locks,  clamps,  and  hinges  of 
brass  which  answer  the  flicker  of  the  lily  while  Habib 
pounds,  shouting  "Mesh'di  Hasan!  Ker'  Hasan!  Hajji 
Hasan!"  in  a  climax  of  honorific  titles  that  are  long  in 
producing  their  effect.  At  last  Hasan  lets  us  into  a 
vaulted  brick  octagon,  with  a  door  or  a  niche  in  each  face 
of  it.  Whether  Hasan  be  Meshedi  or  Kerbelai  or  Hajji, 
however,  we  shall  never  know,  for  he  suddenly  disappears. 

153 


PERSIAN  MINIATURES 

We,  therefore,  not  knowing  which  way  to  turn,  naturally 
turn  to  the  right  and  come  out  into  a  court  with  a  pool 
in  the  middle  and  a  house  at  the  farther  end,  where  a 
woman  clutching  her  veil  in  one  hand  and  a  laleb  in  the 
other  waves  us  wildly  away.  Heavens!  An  anderun— 
or  as  you  might  understand  better,  a  harem.  "It  is 
better  to  dwell  in  a  corner  of  the  housetop  than  with  a 
brawling  woman  in  a  wide  house !"  We  flee  precipitately 
in  the  opposite  direction,  blundering  this  time  into  another 
court,  without  a  pool  but  with  two  more  houses  at  either 
end  of  it.  Wrong  again,  we  learn,  after  more  knocking 
and  shouting.  By  this  time  Hasan  has  found  the  house- 
boy  he  went  to  look  for,  and  we  are  led  out  of  the  octagon 
by  a  third  door,  through  a  low  brick  tunnel,  into  a  cloister 
that  is  worth  travelling  five  hundred  miles  from  a  railroad 
to  see,  encircled  as  it  is  by  pillars  of  the  inimitable  Per- 
sian slimness,  with  stalactite  capitals,  set  between  a  nar- 
row ambulatory  and  a  black  pool.  Our  candles  flicker 
the  length  of  it,  past  a  swimming  star  or  two,  to  another 
crooked  little  passage  of  mystery  that  finally  emerges  into 
the  biggest  court  of  all,  with  a  high  talar  at  each  end  and 
another  enormous  pool  between  them.  Up  a  steep  flight 
of  brick  steps  we  climb,  across  a  talar,  through  a  huge 
room  as  cold  as  an  iceberg,  and  on  into  a  cosy  little  one 
where  faggots  snap  in  a  stucco  fireplace. 

"Better  is  a  dinner  of  herbs,  where  love  is,  than  a 
stalled  ox  and  hatred  therewith."  But  best  is  a  dinner 
of  pilau,  and  gossip  therewith,  on  leaving  which  you 
stumble  in  the  hall  over  a  kursi  with  a  circle  of  black  hats 
sticking  out  from  under  it.  Why  this  unusual  ornament 
in  a  front  hall?  Because  a  few  nights  ago  a  thief  either 
broke  in  or  was  let  into  the  place,  and,  being  discovered, 

154 


OLD  WINE  IN  NEW  BOTTLES 

got  lost  like  ourselves  in  the  maze  of  courts  and  passages 
and  so  was  caught.  He  turned  out  to  be  a  one-handed 
man,  which  means  that  he  was  an  old  offender:  the  penalty 
of  being  light-fingered  in  Persia  is  to  be  relieved  of  the 
unruly  member.  The  poor  wretch  is  now  in  a  fair  way 
to  lose  his  other  hand  as  well.  For  he  sits  in  a  certain 
apartment  at  the  Governor's,  designed  for  such  as  he, 
where  he  is  alternately  cross-questioned  and  bastinadoed. 
Whence  the  protecting  black  hats,  asleep  around  a  kursi 
in  the  hall. 

As  for  us,  we  are  more  than  likely  to  have  no  protecting 
black  hats  about  us  on  our  journey  home — especially 
when  Madam  Moon  is  a-sail  in  her  Persian  sky.  This, 
alas,  is  a  thing  to  cause  shakings  of  the  head.  If  we  were 
Persians,  and  didn't  happen  to  know  the  password  of  the 
night,  it  might  be  a  thing  to  land  us  at  the  Governor's, 
too.  Being  merely  Firengis,  and  therefore  irresponsible 
in  our  acts,  the  watchmen  we  meet  say  nothing.  The 
miniature  brooks  in  the  silent  streets  say  more,  gurgling 
gaily  in  the  moonlight.  Most  of  all  say  the  dogs,  on 
whose  account  it  is  well  to  carry  a  stout  stick.  But  one 
night  a  watchman  detached  himself  from  his  squad,  tak- 
ing pity  on  our  defenceless  condition,  and  saw  us  cour- 
teously home.  And  when  we  reached  our  own  gate,  not  a 
stivver  could  one  of  us  produce  to  tip  our  protector  withal. 
He,  still  courteous,  stalked  away  without  a  word,  though 
perhaps  not  without  his  opinion  of  beings  so  strange  as 
to  have  neither  dignity  nor  money. 

Few  of  the  dinners  to  which  we  go  can  boast  quite  this 
setting  of  romance.  One  of  the  first  to  which  I  was 
bidden,  indeed,  took  place  on  Thanksgiving  Day,  in 
such  company  and  amid  such  surroundings  of  my  own 

155 


PERSIAN  MINIATURES 

country  that  had  it  not  been  for  the  person  who  passed 
the  turkey  and  the  cranberry  sauce,  a  stocking-footed 
individual  magnificent  in  white  trousers  and  a  long- 
tailed  brass-buttoned  coat  which  looked  as  if  it  might 
have  been  cut  out  of  my  grandmother's  "Cashmere" 
shawl,  I  never  would  have  known  that  some  of  my  fellow 
diners  counted  their  absence  from  America  not  by  years 
but  by  decades.  If  they  treated  me  the  more  kindly 
because  my  grandfather,  who  was  one  of  the  first  Amer- 
icans to  set  foot  in  Persia,  cleared  the  way  for  them  nearly 
a  hundred  years  ago,  they  did  not  cast  me  off  when  they 
discovered  me  to  be  a  wolf  in  sheep's  clothing.  So  do  not 
expect  me  to  make  copy  out  of  them — beyond  saying 
that  they  taught  me  how  friendly  and  human  a  missionary 
may  be. 

The  house  to  which  we  go  oftenest  of  all  has  least  in  it 
to  remind  us  where  we  are.  It  does,  to  be  sure,  remind  us 
of  the  cousinship  between  Persia  and  India,  being  built 
on  the  lines  of  an  Indian  bungalow,  with  wide  verandas 
running  the  whole  length  of  it  in  front  and  behind;  and 
black  hats  bring  in  the  tea  or  serve  the  dinner.  But  once 
they  are  gone  the  drawing  room  is  a  piece  of  England, 
down  to  the  very  coals  on  the  hearth  and  the  carpet  on 
the  floor — in  this  country  whose  rugs  are  in  demand  the 
world  over!  It  is  a  perfect  example  of  the  steadfastness 
with  which  the  Englishman  sticks  to  his  own.  And  we 
are  sure  to  find  there  the  modern  descendant  of  that  fam- 
ous old  British  type  of  the  gentleman  adventurer,  who 
likes  a  bit  of  a  lark  and  the  sight  of  strange  suns,  who 
rides,  shoots,  plays  tennis  and  tent-pegging,  and  other- 
wise comports  himsel  in  a  manner  which  no  Persian — 
and  no  German — can  understand,  any  more  than  they 

156 


OLD  WINE  IN  NEW  BOTTLES 

will  ever  understand  how  such  men  have  come  to  inherit 
so  goodly  a  portion  of  the  earth. 

What  might  cause  the  German  in  particular  to  throw 
up  his  hands  is  the  music  to  be  heard  there  after  dinner. 
Do  you  sing  or  play?  Never  mind:  in  that  hospitable 
drawing  room  you  have  to,  just  as  at  Mr.  Britling's  every- 
body had  to  try  their  hand  at  hockey.  And  not  many  of 
us  can  acquit  ourselves  so  creditably  as  the  master  of  the 
house,  as  one  of  the  lady  missionaries,  or  as  that  visitor 
from  afar  who  entranced  us  one  night  with  his  estudiantina 
songs  of  Smyrna,  accompanying  himself  on  his  lute.  But 
it  is  gay,  it  is  human,  it  is  homey.  And  afterward  we 
dance.  We  dance  on  that  English  carpet!  And  as  the 
society  of  gentleman  adventurers  inevitably  has  a  strong 
masculine  tinge,  the  men  can  often  get  no  better  partners 
than  each  other.  Nor  do  we  fox-trot  and  I  don't  know 
what.  We  dance  the  good  old-fashioned  waltz — not, 
mind  you,  that  hybrid  two-step  in  waltz  time  which  in 
my  generation  was  the  thing  in  America.  An  occasional 
concession  to  America  is  a  true  two-step;  and  I  have  seen 
there  a  hesitating  one-step  and  a  perfectly  unhesitating 
Highland  Fling.  At  any  rate,  we  caper,  on  that  magic 
carpet  flown  from  England  to  Persia,  till  unheard  of  hours 
in  the  morning,  while  black  hats  peer  in  from  the  veranda 
and  ask  themselves  what  extraordinary,  if  not  immoral, 
things  the  Firengis  can  be  up  to. 

There  is  another  and  more  essential  savour  of  our  so- 
ciety, to  be  tasted  in  the  houses  of  us  all.  I  happen  to 
have  seen  a  few  foreign  colonies  in  my  day,  but  Hamadan  is 
another  pair  of  sleeves.  For  we  are  neither  people  of 
leisure  living  in  Persia  for  the  enrichment  of  aesthetic 
souls  or  the  easing  of  depleted  pocket  books,  nor  are  we 

'57 


PERSIAN  MINIATURES 

hewers  of  wood  and  drawers  of  water  for  a  plutocratic 
ruling  caste.  On  the  contrary,  we  rather  give  ourselves 
the  airs  of  a  ruling  caste,  albeit  most  of  us  are  merchants 
or  missionaries.  These,  I  take  it,  are  the  most  populous 
estates  in  Persia,  though  the  Service  and  the  Bank  take 
precedence  of  them  at  dinner.  In  Hamadan  the  Service 
is  very  thinly  represented  by  one  consul,  a  Turk,  and 
two  bachelor  vice  consuls,  an  Englishman  and  a  Russian. 
Upon  the  Bank,  therefore,  falls  the  social  primacy  among 
us,  the  manager  of  it  being  known  to  all  mankind  as  the 
Reis,  the  Chief.  That  other  Persian  estate,  the  Tele- 
graph, is  foreign  to  us,  since  we  are  off  the  main  line  of 
the  Anglo-Indian  wire.  To  make  up  for  it  we  have 
the  Gendarmerie,  the  Customs,  the  Road,  and  the 
Alliance — the  Alliance  Israelite  Universelle,  of  which 
more  anon. 

Now  you  have  here  the  ingredients  of  a  sufficient  diver- 
sity. And  this  diversity  is  further  variegated  by  the 
number  of  flags  we  fly.  Among  us — I  take  pains  to  follow 
the  alphabet! — are  Americans,  hyphenate  Armenians, 
Belgians,  a  Bulgarian,  Englishmen,  Frenchmen,  a  Ger- 
man or  two,  Greeks,  Russians,  a  Swede,  Swiss,  and  Turks. 
What  draws  out,  however,  the  true  flavour  of  this  peacock 
pie  is  that  no  one  element  is  large  enough  to  suffice  to 
itself.  So  whether  I  will  or  no,  I,  who  am  in  theory  an 
enraged  enemy  of  cosmopolitanism,  see  every  day  some 
such  contrast  of  race  or  of  worldly  estate  as  delights  my 
secret  heart  better  than  all  else  in  life.  What,  for  ex- 
ample, can  be  a  more  touching  example  of  the  lion  lying 
down  with  the  lamb  than  to  behold  an  elderly  missionary 
from  rural  America  pour  a  cup  of  tea  for  a  handsome 
young  Frenchman — very  much  awake,  as  they  say  in 

•58 


OLD  WINE  IN  NEW  BOTTLES 

his  country — or  a  Russian  officer  kiss  the  hand  of  a  Jewess 
who  came  to  Ecbatana  from  Babylon  by  way  of  the 
Quartier  Latin  ?  Yet  I  notice  that  our  gatherings — 
and  some  of  them  collect  almost  all  of  us  under  one  roof — 
deficient  as  they  incline  to  be  on  the  distaff  side,  do  not 
seem  to  include  certain  fairer  members  of  our  circle. 
One  is  a  young  Frenchwoman,  governess  in  the  family  of 
the  Turkish  consul,  whose  mots  are  in  constant  circulation 
amongst  us  but  not  her  visiting  cards.  Can  it  be  that 
we  are  snobbish  about  Mile.  Celestine?  I  did  not  have 
time  to  find  out,  for  she  deserted  us  in  company  with  a 
Greek  rug  man.  Then  there  is  the  mysterious  being  who 
keeps  house  for  the  Russian  roadmaster,  by  some  reported 
to  be  a  countess,  by  others  a  cook:  why  do  I  never  meet 
her  at  dinner?  And  I  shall  always  bitterly  regret  that 
inopportune  flight  of  a  fellow-countrywoman  of  my  own, 
whose  fantastic  legend  made  her  out  at  once  a  queen  of 
the  music  hall  and  consort  of  a  Persian  Khan.  Ventur- 
ing hither  to  inspect  his  ancestral  estates,  she  became  for  a 
moment  the  bright  particular  star  of  our  society  and  the 
confidante  of  the  missionary  ladies.  But,  alas,  she  was 
so  cruel  as  to  vanish  no  more  than  a  few  weeks  before  my 
arrival. 

Gossip,  my  masters?  But  characters,  too,  and  situa- 
tions, and  settings,  and  ready-made  plots!  Some  of 
them  are  Jane  Austen  and  Henry  James.  Others  are 
Kipling  or  Conrad.  A  few  are  Arabian  Nights.  Not 
for  these  chaste  pages  are  they,  therefore.  And,  for  the 
rest,  most  of  them  concern  people  whose  bread  one  has 
eaten,  and  so,  however  they  may  provoke  the  itching 
hand  to  clap  them  between  covers,  must  be  permitted  to 
walk  their  romantic  ways  at  large. 

159 


PERSIAN  MINIATURES 

ii 

Where  three  people  live  within  thirty-three  miles  of 
each  other,  two  of  them  are  sure  to  form  a  clique.  This 
is  the  law  of  life,  and  I  shall  not  be  foolish  enough  to  cry 
out  against  it.  I  am  rather  sorry,  though,  that  we  see  so 
little  of  the  Russians.  My  first  impulse  is  to  make  friends 

with  a  Russian.  But Half  a  dozen  buts.  Distance 

is  one.  None  of  them  happen  to  live  very  near  us.  Lan- 
guage is  another  That  blessed  Anglo-Russian  Agree- 
ment of  1907  is  a  third,  by  virtue  of  which  Englishmen 
and  Russians  in  Persia  are  generally  at  swords'  points 
— or  were,  under  the  old  regime.  Then  mysterious  coun- 
tess-cooks do  not  fit  into  the  Anglo-Saxon  scheme  of 
things.  And  the  vice-consul,  who  is  also  official  head  of 
the  bank:  it  is  remembered  of  him  that  he  was  once  porter 
of  the  Russian  bank  in  Meshed,  in  a  muzhik's  smock. 
And  he  studies  French  with  Mile.  Celestine.  That  Mile. 
Celestine  somehow  casts  an  unfortunate  air  around  the 
Russian  vice-consulate.  Nothings,  nothings,  which  added 
together  contrive  to  make  a  something. 

I,  of  course,  am  not  frightened  by  Mile.  Celestine,  or 
by  a  countess-cook,  or  even  by  a  banker  vice-consul 
who  has  been  a  muzhik.  On  the  contrary,  they  look  to 
me  like  uncommonly  good  copy — to  use  a  gross  profes- 
sional term — and  I  am  dying  to  call  on  them.  But  what 
to  do — if  I  am  the  guest  of  the  British  half  of  the  Agree- 
ment of  1907,  whose  face  I  cannot  blacken?  Again 
nothings,  which  added  together  make  a  something! 
Nevertheless,  accident  brought  it  about  not  only  that 
I  should  meet  Mile.  Celestine,  but  that  I  should  dine  at 
the  Russian  vice-consulate  And  O  dear  how  I  contrived 

160 


OLD  WINE  IN  NEW  BOTTLES 

to  blacken  my  own  face,  if  not  that  of  my  entire  race! 
It  came  about  in  this  wise.  The  initiated  had  told  me 
that  no  matter  at  what  hour  you  were  invited  to  dine  at 
the  Russian  vice-consulate,  dinner  ^  was  never  served 
before  eleven.  Now  it  happened  that  on  the  appointed 
evening  Hamadan  produced  one  of  her  rarest  miracles. 
It  rained.  It  rained  so  furiously,  and  I  had  so  far  to 
walk  through  swimming  and  unfamiliar  streets,  that  I 
thought  myself  perfectly  safe  in  starting  about  nine. 
And  I  found  my  host  at  his  dessert.  I  attempted  lame 
apologies  by  saying  that  I  had  lost  my  way.  My  host 
was  good  enough  to  apologise  in  turn  for  his  promptness, 
informing  me  that  as  it  was  neither  Wednesday  nor 
Saturday  he  was  free  of  the  courrier  de  Petersbourg.  "  I 
have  so  much  to  do,  my  God!"  he  cried,  clapping  his 
hands.  "I  have  so  much  to  do!"  He  must,  poor 
wretch,  what  with  his  vice-consulate  and  his  bank  and  his 
French  lessons.  But  he  was  simple  and  friendly,  as  a 
Russian  knows  how  to  be  to  a  stranger,  and  he  kept  filling 
up  the  glasses  around  my  plate  so  fast  and  so  indiscrimi- 
nately, with  vodka,  beer,  champagne,  and  liqueurs,  that 
I  had  to  be  careful  what  I  did  with  them. 

What  troubled  me  most  about  this  accident  was  that 
another  guest  was  the  new  commander  of  the  Persian 
Cossacks — a  grave  and  handsome  officer  who  quite  evi- 
dently had  never  been  a  mu$ik.  He  further  upset  my 
calculations  by  drinking  only  wine,  and  next  to  none  of 
that;  and  very  quizzically  did  he  look  at  the  two  of 
us.  At  first  he  had  very  little  to  say,  saying  it  in  a  French 
which  filled  me  with  envy.  He  told  me  that  his  superiors 
had  not  quite  made  up  their  minds  whether  to  choose 
Hamadan  or  Kermanshah  for  a  post  of  Cossacks.  He 

161 


PERSIAN  MINIATURES 

hoped  Hamadan,  because  it  is  higher  and  cooler.  He 
was  a  man  of  the  mountains  himself,  from  Tiflis.  And 
he  said  his  wife  was  German.  I  have  often  thought  about 
them  since.  In  the  meantime,  he  said,  he  had  been  look- 
ing for  a  house  to  live  in,  and  had  taken  on  trial  the 
roomy  mansion  of  a  Hamadani  with  twenty  wives — eight 
of  whom,  to  be  sure,  lived  in  other  places  than  Hamadan. 
It  seems  there  is  a  highly  popular  and  perfectly  lawful 
institution  in  this  country  whereby  in  addition  to  the 
four  legal  consorts  approved  by  the  Koran,  a  man  may 
have  temporary  wives  to  any  number! 

Among  other  interesting  things  the  Colonel  told  us 
that  there  had  been  a  good  deal  of  talk  in  the  Russian 
papers  of  late  about  a  certain  mysterious  traveller  in 
Persia,  of  whom  I  had  already  heard.  I  had  heard  about 
him  because  he  owned  one  of  the  few  automobiles  in  the 
country.  What  I  had  not  heard  about  him  was  that, 
having  a  French  name  and  a  Brazilian  passport,  he  was 
supposed  to  be  a  German  and  a  secret  agent.  At  any 
rate,  he  seemed  to  make  most  of  his  journeys  in  that  part 
of  Persia  which  adjoins  the  Baghdad  trail,  and  the  Rus- 
sian papers  reported  that  he  had  been  buying  land,  or 
lending  money  to  landowners,  in  the  region  of  Isfahan — 
presumably  to  establish  "interests"  for  the  Germans 
against  the  day  when  the  question  of  the  Persian  branch 
of  the  Baghdad  railway  should  come  up.  The  Czar 
and  the  Kaiser,  the  Colonel  reminded  me,  had  an  inter- 
view about  that  matter  at  Potsdam  in  1910.  In  pursu- 
ance of  the  understanding  at  which  they  arrived  the  Rus- 
sians were  to  have  according  to  one  account  five  years, 
according  to  another  ten,  in  which  to  build  a  line  from  the 
north  to  Khanikin.  And  if  they  didn't  do  it  within  the 

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OLD  WINE  IN  NEW  BOTTLES 

time  agreed  upon,  the  coast  was  to  be  clear  for  the  Ger- 
mans. 

We  afterward  saw  a  good  deal  of  the  Colonel  and  his 
German  wife.  She,  at  least,  fitted  into  the  Anglo-Saxon 
scheme  of  things!  So,  more  or  less,  did  the  wife  of  the 
banker  vice-consul's  assistant.  The  latter  has  a  French 
name,  too,  he  speaks  excellent  English,  and  they  say  he  is 
of  German  extraction.  Who  knows?  In  those  simple 
days  one  didn't  pay  much  attention  to  such  things.  He 
is  at  all  events  suave,  and  more  worldly  wise  than  his 
chief,  over  whom  he  seems  to  exert  a  subtle  authority. 
Even  in  those  simple  days,  however,  I  used  to  wonder  if 
this  was  another  example  of  the  case  of  which  Mr.  Shuster 
had  a  taste,  whereby  under  the  old  regime  there  was  so 
often  a  double  authority  in  Russian  affairs,  the  power  be- 
hind the  throne  sometimes  being  stronger  than  the  throne 
itself.  But  being  myself  nothing  but  a  humble  noter  of 
the  appearances  of  this  world,  I  took  quite  as  much 
interest  in  another  member  of  the  Russian  colony  whom 
I  encountered  behind  a  samovar.  I  first  tried  him  in 
English  and  French,  and  nothing  happened  Then,  if 
you  please,  he  tried  me  in  Turkish.  And  through  that  dark 
medium  it  came  out  that  he  was  a  Bulgarian,  whom  a 
fantastic  destiny  had  landed  in  a  Russian  bank  in  Persia ! 

Some  of  the  visitors  who  help  to  keep  life  in  Hamadan 
from  becoming  monotonous  are  Russians,  and  not  the 
least  amusing.  One  of  them  might  have  been  the  hero  of 
a  famous  Russian  story.  He  was  a  son  of  papa  from 
Petersburg,  who  came  to  inspect  the  bank.  He  spent 
two  or  three  months  in  our  midst,  during  which  time  he 
put  his  nose  into  his  bank  for  two  half  hours.  In  like 
manner  did  he  pass  a  year  and  a  half  in  Persia,  at  twenty- 


PERSIAN  MINIATURES 

five  roubles  a  day;  but  he  went  home  woefully  in  debt. 
He  was  delightful,  and  an  indefatigable  bridge  player. 
No  less  delightful,  though  rather  more  responsible  as  an 
inspector,  was  a  dazzling  young  man  who  came  to  make 
reports  on  Russian  commerce.  I  remember  hearing  him 
say  one  night  after  dinner  that  his  people  had  decided 
not  to  build  that  railway  to  Khanikin.  Why  should  they? 
It  would  only  favour  competition  against  themselves. 
If  the  Germans  chose  to,  let  them.  As  for  the  English, 
he  had  been  astounded  to  find  out  that  their  famous  oil 
concession  extended  right  up  to  the  frontier  of  the  Cau- 
casus, where  there  is  plenty  of  oil  as  yet  untapped.  Very 
clever  of  them;  but  very  disagreeable  for  Baku.  But 
those  English,  luckily,  are  so  unenterprising!  They  were 
enterprising  enough,  though,  he  added,  to  have  suggested  a 
revision  of  the  Agreement  of  1907.  He  thought  it  might 
be  a  good  idea. 

All  this  was  said  in  an  English  house,  with  that  discon- 
certing frankness  of  which  a  Russian  has  the  secret.  I, 
however,  being  of  an  incurable  light-mindedness,  was 
even  more  enchanted  by  his  vignettes  of  the  characters  a 
traveller  will  encounter.  He  told  us,  in  his  fluent  but  not 
perfectly  idiomatic  English,  about  a  lady  who  had  been 
unfortunate  in  husbands.  One  fell  out  of  a  window, 
another  got  himself  shot  in  the  Caucasus,  something  else 
happened  to  the  third.  And  then  she  had  found  it  in  her 
to  marry  an  aviator.  "But  what  a  carelessness!"  he 
cried.  "They  perish!" 

in 

It  is  a  sample  of  those  curious  strata  of  ignorance  that 
darken  the  mind  of  man  that  I  could  have  lived  so  many 

164 


OLD  WINE  IN  NEW  BOTTLES 

years  in  the  same  world  with  the  Alliance  Universelle 
Israelite — or  is  it  the  Alliance  Israelite  Universelle  ? — 
without  hearing  anything  about  it.  In  Hamadan,  how- 
ever, I  heard  about  it  very  soon.  And  I  gave  myself 
the  pleasure  of  going  with  the  Sah'b  and  the  Khanum  to 
call  on  it. 

Having  done  so,  I  cannot  boast  that  I  made  the  most 
of  my  opportunities.  All  I  can  say  is  that  the  late 
Baron  Hirsch  of  Vienna  had  something  to  do  with  found- 
ing the  Alliance,  that  its  headquarters  are  in  Paris,  that 
it  maintains  excellent  schools  for  the  Jews  in  many  parts 
of  Asia  and  Africa,  and  that  it  has  maintained  one  in 
humble  Hamadan  since  1900.  Whence  it  is  that  mir^as 
may  be  picked  up  here  who  speak  a  very  fair  French.  The 
school  is  carried  on  entirely  in  that  language.  There  are 
two  schools,  really,  one  for  girls  and  one  for  boys.  They 
stand  in  the  same  enclosure  in  the  heart  of  the  city,  though 
in  a  northwestern  quarter  of  it  with  which  I  never  became 
very  familiar.  The  gateway  let  us  into  a  big  trim  court, 
set  about  with  buildings  quite  the  most  imposing  and  the 
most  European-looking  in  Hamadan.  Over  the  portico 
of  one  were  emblazoned  in  Latin  letters  the  names  of 
Baron  Hirsch  and  other  philanthropists  of  his  race.  And 
the  one  where  the  resident  teachers  live  has  more  of  a 
Latin  than  a  Persian  look,  with  its  long  pillared  porch. 

The  director  and  his  wife  received  us  in  a  drawing 
room  not  so  different  from  one  of  ours,  though  rather 
chillier  They  are  evidently  of  the  Chosen  People, 
longer-nosed,  quicker-witted,  speaking  infinitely  better 
French  than  we.  Monsieur  was  born  in  Constantinople, 
has  lived  long  in  Paris,  and  enjoys  more  than  a  bowing 
acquaintance  with  Egypt  and  Algiers.  Madame  is  a 


PERSIAN  MINIATURES 

small,  plump,  prolific  person,  disconcertingly  cross-eyed, 
who  administers  advice  and  rebuke  to  her  numerous 
progeny  while  allowing  none  of  the  conversation  to  escape 
her.  We  have  the  more  in  common  because  the  Khanum 
has  been  good  enough  to  help  out  the  missionary  school 
during  an  absence  of  a  member  of  the  staff.  Some  one 
puts  the  case  upon  the  plane  of  humour  by  saying  that 
the  Khanum  has  become  a  rival  of  the  ladies  of  the  Alli- 
ance. "But  no!"  objects  Monsieur  amiably.  "You  do 
good  and  we  do  good.  In  good  there  is  no  rivalry." 
He  confesses  that  Persia  makes  him  regret  northern  Africa 
a  little.  Pursuing  comparisons,  he  tells  us  that  in  Algiers 
the  French  have  effaced  the  Arab,  whereas  in  Egypt  one 
still  feels  him.  The  Sah'b,  nevertheless,  is  a  little  dis- 
illusioned to  hear  that  for  all  that  his  fellow  countrymen 
are  not  absolutely  adored  by  the  natives  of  the  Nile! 

There  are  four  foreign  assistants  in  the  school — two 
young  men  and  two  young  women.  The  latter,  who 
hail  from  Syria,  wear  sunbonnets  and  black  aprons.  They 
are  very  gay,  very  coy,  very  given  to  the  sidelong  glance 
and  to  the  confidential  whisper.  Why  not,  when  upon 
them  devolves  so  much  of  the  responsibility  of  representing 
the  sex  in  Hamadan?  But  there  is  no  shadow  of  doubt 
that  they  could  show  us  all  their  heels  in  arithmetic, 
geography,  or  any  other  branch  of  human  science.  The 
young  men  are  more  Oriental  in  appearance,  being  slight, 
dark,  unfathomably  eyed,  yet  of  a  vivacity  that  reminds 
me  of  Salonica  quay.  One  of  them,  who  is  a  native  of 
Tangier,  mourns  the  lost  glories  of  Cairo.  Even  after 
Paris,  he  tells  us,  Cairo  did  not  disenchant  him.  As  for 
the  other,  he  sings  the  praises  of  Baghdad.  At  least  there 
is  life  there,  he  says.  There  are  carriages  in  the  streets, 

166 


OLD  WINE  IN  NEW  BOTTLES 

there  are  boats  on  the  Tigris,  there  are — will  you  believe 
it? — cinematographs  to  amuse  one  at  night.  Whereas 
Hamadan,  with  its  movies  that  do  not  move,  its  tea 
houses  that  are  not  cafes,  its  evening  silence  as  of  the 
grave O  God ! 

Nevertheless,  they  are  willing  to  bury  themselves  alive 
in  a  hole  like  this.  And  I  had  always  been  simple  enough 
to  suppose  that  missionaries  were  a  Christian  invention! 
Yet  I  seem  to  make  out  that  these  doers  of  good  might  not 
be  regarded  as  among  the  most  orthodox  of  Israel.  They 
do  not  take  Esther  and  Mordecai  too  seriously,  or  Tobias 
and  the  Angel.  Did  you  know  that  Hamadan  is  the 
scene  of  a  good  part  of  that  story,  and  that  Tobias  was 
buried  here,  too?  I  did  not  until  I  heard  it  at  the  Alliance. 
I  also  seem  to  make  out,  though,  that  our  hosts  have  a 
sense  of  and  a  pride  in  the  antiquity  of  their  race,  living 
here  where  Jews  have  lived  since  the  time  of  Sargon,  king 
of  Assyria,  where  Darius  the  Great  discovered  and  put 
into  effect  the  decree  of  Cyrus  with  regard  to  the  rebuild- 
ing of  the  temple  at  Jerusalem,  where  in  the  twelfth 
century  the  famous  traveller  Benjamin  of  Tudela  found 
fifty  thousand  of  his  own  people.  There  are  not  many 
more  than  a  tenth  of  that  number  now,  an  astounding 
proportion  of  whom  speak  French  nearly  as  well  as 
they  do  Persian. 

But — I  don't  know — we  somehow  see  very  little  of 
these  intelligent  and  amusing  members  of  the  Alliance. 
Nothings  again  that  make  a  something — distance,  lan- 
guage, work.  Once  or  twice,  though,  I  was  on  the  edge  of 
telling  one  of  them  why  we  are  all  a  little  afraid  of  them. 
For  when  they  pay  calls  they  do  it  in  a  solid  phalanx — 
Monsieur,  Madame,  the  two  young  ladies  in  sunbonnets, 

167 


PERSIAN  MINIATURES 

the  two  dark  young  gentlemen.    And  they  all  shout  at 
the  tops  of  their  voices. 

IV 

The  saints  and  the  poets  lament  or  boast  of  being  in 
the  world  but  not  of  it.  I,  being  neither  poet  nor  saint, 
find  that  Hamadan  gives  me  the  same  sensation.  And 
I  know  not  whether  to  lament  or  to  boast.  In  the  mean- 
time I  speculate,  admiring  how  East  is  East  and  West  is 
West  and  how  seldom  the  twain  do  meet.  In  theory  I 
regret  it.  In  practise  I  incline  on  the  whole  to  approve 
that  instinct  which  makes  us  distrust  or  even  dislike  a 
"foreigner/'  A  man,  generally,  must  be  one  thing  or 
another;  and  the  more  clearly  he  is  one  thing  or  the  other, 
the  more  does  he  usually  amount  to  in  this  unintelligible 
world.  A  Richard  Burton,  a  Lafcadio  Hearn,  an  Armin- 
ius  Vambery,  can  contrive  to  be  one  thing  and  another; 
but  most  of  us  degenerate  into  nothing  better  than  spies 
or  tramps  if  we  attempt  it.  Or  in  the  end  we  get  swal- 
lowed up  by  what  we  too  intimately  explore.  So  I  be- 
lieve that  there  is  something  human  and  natural,  some- 
thing not  altogether  shameful,  at  the  root  of  such  delicate 
matters  as  antisemitism,  say,  or  the  relations  between 
Japan  and  America.  I  do  not  dislike  a  man  because  he  is 
a  Jew  or  a  Japanese.  I  like  or  dislike  Jews  and  Japanese 
on  the  same  grounds  that  I  like  or  dislike  other  people; 
and  so,  I  fancy,  is  it  with  nearly  everybody  else.  But 
not  many  people  feel  their  hearts  drawn  out  toward  men 
who  look  too  different  from  themselves,  or  have  too  dif- 
ferent manners,  or  are  steeped  in  too  different  associa- 
tions. That  is  all  there  is,  really,  to  antisemitism  or  to 
the  question  of  the  Japanese  in  California.  Why  should 

1 68 


OLD  WINE  IN  NEW  BOTTLES 

we  not  recognise  so  simple  a  fact?  It  operates  on  both 
sides  of  any  given  case — and  on  both  sides  of  many  more 
cases  than  I  have  named.  Nor  is  it  incompatible  with 
excellent  relations  between  countries.  The  truth  of  the 
matter  is  that  two  races,  like  two  persons,  appreciate 
each  other  best  from  a  distance!  It  is  not  a  thing  to 
wrangle  about.  It  is  of  the  essence  of  all  human  ties. 
Piracy  and  purse-cutting  are  of  course  intolerable;  but 
it  is  just  as  intolerable  to  find  our  neighbours  perpetually 
sitting  in  our  own  chairs.  This  is  the  perfectly  honest 
instinct  which  has  formed  so  many  personalities  and  civili- 
sations and  brought  them  to  a  flower  of  their  own.  A 
world  motley  enough  for  the  flags  which  now  fly  in  it  is  a 
richer  world  than  any  dreamed  of  by  the  flag-melters.  For 
my  part,  at  any  rate,  nothing  terrifies  me  so  much  as  the 
possibility  that  mankind  may  be  run  into  one  mould,  and 
that  on  all  the  six  continents  we  shall  one  day  eat  and  wear 
and  read  the  same  things  And  from  the  papers  I  have 
seen  since  August  i,  1914,  I  gather  that  a  similar  terror 
burns  in  worthier  bosoms. 

Nevertheless,  being  myself  of  those  whose  tendency  it 
is  to  degenerate  into  tramps  or  spies,  I  am  rather  sorry 
we  meet  so  few  Persians!  Yet  what  we  do  see  of 
them  is  perhaps  all  the  more  interesting  to  a  stranger 
newly  come  into  a  strange  land.  That  Khan,  for  in- 
stance, whom  we  passed  in  the  street  one  snowy  moonlight 
night — what  a  picture  he  made  of  customs  different  from 
our  own !  We,  of  course,  were  hurrying  home  unattended, 
like  pickpockets.  And  he?  In  front  of  him  went  a 
mir%a  in  an  aba,  or  so  he  seemed  to  be  by  his  cap.  Next 
stalked  the  Khan,  in  a  European  overcoat,  very  slowly, 
as  befits  one  who  is  no  slave  of  time.  On  either  side 

169 


PERSIAN  MINIATURES 

of  him  walked  a  servant  swinging  an  enormous  lantern  of 
white  linen — the  size  of  the  lanterns  testifying  to  the  con- 
sequence of  the  Khan.  There  followed  another  mirza  in 
another  aba.  And  last  of  all  marched  a  couple  of  bravoes 
with  rifles  on  their  shoulders — or  matchlocks,  most  likely. 

Another  detail  of  social  procedure  in  Persia  is  that  a 
call  can  never  be  in  the  nature  of  a  surprise.  Notice 
must  be  sent  beforehand  and  an  appointment  duly  made. 
No  chance  there  for  a  hostess  to  be  out — or  for  a  caller  to 
empty  a  cardcase  in  an  afternoon.  Your  Persian  is  not 
so  destitute  of  manners  as  to  rush  away  after  fifteen  or 
thirty  minutes,  as  if  unable  to  sit  still  another  instant. 
An  hour  is  none  too  long  for  a  formal  call,  while  two 
hours,  or  four,  or  six,  are  not  uncommon  between  ac- 
quaintances of  some  standing.  We  have  less  experience 
of  these  visitations  than  the  missionaries,  who  follow 
the  local  custom  of  calling  on  their  friends,  Persian,  He- 
brew, or  Armenian,  on  the  local  holidays.  And  their 
friends  acknowledge  this  courtesy  by  calling  on  the  mis- 
sionaries on  Christmas  Day.  At  least  this  had  always 
been  the  case  until  the  Christmas  I  was  in  Hamadan. 
Then,  after  consultation  among  ourselves,  the  notice 
was  sent  out  that  callers  would  be  received  instead  on 
New  Year's  Day — which  corresponds  more  exactly  to  the 
Persian  custom.  But  certain  old  stagers  were  so  offended 
by  this  lapse  of  precedent  that  they  refused  to  call  at  all. 
Yet  even  so,  one  of  our  missionary  friends  told  us  that  she 
received  over  three  hundred  New  Year  visitors. 

Rather  to  their  surprise,  the  Sah'b  and  the  Khanum 
came  in  for  a  share  of  this  attention.  I  suspect  the  new 
house  may  have  had  something  to  do  with  it.  Any  Ha- 
madani  who  had  seen  the  outside  of  that  extraordinary 

170 


OLD  WINE  IN  NEW  BOTTLES 

structure  was  consumed  by  a  desire  to  inspect  the  inside. 
At  any  rate,  they  began  ringing  the  bell,  or  knocking  at  the 
gate,  by  half-past  nine  in  the  morning.  As  they  were  of 
both  sexes,  they  of  course  had  to  be  received  in  different 
parts  of  the  house.  And  as  the  Sah'b  happened  to  be  out, 
I  was  finally  sent  for  in  despair  to  go  downstairs  and 
confront  twenty-one  kolas,  not  one  of  which  I  had  ever 
before  set  eyes  on  and  to  not  one  of  which  did  I  suppose  I 
would  be  able  to  say  boo.  I  therefore  shook  twenty-one 
hands,  made  twenty-one  bows,  and  whispered  the  same 
mystic  number  to  Habib.  It  then  transpired  that  several 
among  the  owners  of  the  kolas  spoke  English  as  well  as 
I,  while  several  more — thanks  to  that  blessed  Alliance 
—spoke  French.  But  most  of  them  contented  themselves 
with  examining  furtively  the  chairs  on  which  they  sat 
in  none  too  much  ease,  and  the  various  other  strange 
objects  about  them.  In  the  meantime  the  house-boys 
passed  innumerable  cups  of  tea,  serving  them  on  their 
knees.  This  exaggeration  of  courtesy,  I  imagine,  must  be 
a  tradition  of  houses  where  everybody  sits  on  the  floor. 
As  luck  would  have  it,  Mehm'd  Ali  had  baked  a  couple 
of  his  famous  cakes,  which  helped  to  fill  in  the  gaps  be- 
tween my  spasmodic  attempts  to  make  small  talk  in 
strange  tongues  with  twenty-one  unknown  beings.  And 
we  were  also  fortunate  enough  to  have  on  hand  a  quantity 
of  shirini — small,  hard  Persian  candies  which  make  up  in 
colour  what  they  lack  in  taste. 

The  twenty-one  were  nearer  forty-two  by  the  time  the 
Sah'b  returned  to  my  aid.  A  little  later  a  batch  of  ninety 
youths  appeared  in  a  body — to  pay  their  respects  to  the 
Sah'b  as  a  patron  of  the  American  boys'  school!  Not 
many  of  them  spoke  any  perceptible  English;  for  the 

171 


PERSIAN  MINIATURES 

missionaries,  unlike  their  colleagues  of  the  Alliance, 
make  it  a  point  to  carry  on  their  affairs  in  the  language  of 
the  country.  What  surprised  me  more  was  to  have  one 
of  the  ninety  pointed  out  to  me  as  an  Englishman.  Yet 
he  knew  English  no  better  than  the  rest,  being  attired, 
furthermore,  in  the  short  black  kola  and  long  pleated  coat 
of  a  Persian  Khan.  I  could  hardly  wait  to  hear  the  ex- 
planation of  these  mysteries,  which  after  all  was  simple 
enough.  He  was  merely  an  example,  that  English  boy 
in  a  Persian  kola,  of  what  happens  when  East  meets  West. 
His  father,  although  born  in  England,  had  desired  like 
me  to  know  more  of  Persia.  He  had  therefore  turned 
Mohammedan  and  married  a  Persian,  with  a  jewel  in 
her  nose — from  whom  the  son  takes  his  costume,  his  lan- 
guage, his  looks.  And  his  mind?  And  his  future?  The 

mother's,  too,  no  doubt.     But — life ! 

The  Khanum  in  the  meantime  was  having  experiences 
of  her  own.  Her  visitors,  as  was  proper,  entered  by  the 
back  door  and  were  received  in  the  dining  room,  from 
which  the  chairs  had  been  removed  to  our  part  of  the  house. 
That,  of  course,  made  no  difference  to  the  ladies,  who 
would  not  have  known  what  to  do  with  them.  They  sat 
on  the  floor,  where  young  Abbas  and  the  cook's  infantile 
apprentice  handed  them  their  share  of  what  the  older 
boys  were  serving  the  men.  If  they  objected  to  our  im- 
purity, they  bravely  swallowed  their  scruples  with  their 
tea,  and  perhaps  went  to  the  bath  afterward.  As  for  us, 
I  know  we  aired  the  house  for  a  good  hour!  But  I  must 
add  that  most  of  our  callers  were  of  the  humbler  sort. 
The  Khanum  told  us  she  had  answered  innumerable 
questions  with  regard  to  her  etat  civil.  All  the  ladies 
wanted  to  know  how  old  she  was,  how  long  she  had  been 

172 


OLD  WINE  IN  NEW  BOTTLES 

married,  how  many  children  she  had,  etc.,  etc.  They 
were  scandalised  to  hear  that  her  parents  had  not  found  a 
husband  for  her  till  she  was  twenty.  It  is  by  no  means 
unheard  of,  you  know,  for  a  Persian  bride  to  be  nine  • 
years  old,  while  an  unmarried  girl  of  fifteen  or  sixteen  is 
no  better  than  an  old  maid.  They  found  it  unfortunate, 
too,  that  the  Khanum  had  married  late  in  the  year  as 
well  as  late  in  life.  For  a  wedding  should  take  place  in 
the  spring.  Otherwise  children  will  be  long  in  coming, 
or  will  never  come  at  all.  And  that,  for  a  Persian  woman, 
is  the  disaster  of  disasters. 

My  own  regret  at  having  been  cut  off  from  half  of  so 
interesting  a  social  event  was  tempered  for  me  by  an  acci- 
dent which  later  befell  me  in  a  missionary  house.  I 
chanced  to  open  the  door  upon  a  gathering  of  ladies, 
who  were  Armenians  and  who  therefore  countenanced  my 
ill-timed  intrusion.  They  all  wore  black  lace  scarves 
over  their  hair,  which  gave  them  rather  a  Spanish  look; 
but  what  reminded  me  more  of  the  Jewesses  of  Salonica 
was  a  certain  outstanding  black  fillet  bound  about  their 
brows.  The  greatest  lady  of  them  all,  a  banker's  wife, 
dazzled  me  by  the  stupendous  emerald  she  bore  in  the 
middle  of  her  fillet,  like  an  elderly  Lucrezia  Crivelli. 
Now  it  happens  that  I  am  consumed  by  an  unappeasable 
passion  for  emeralds.  The  person  in  history  whom  I 
most  envy  is  Abdaz,  daughter  of  the  tenth  century  Caliph 
Al  Muizz  of  Cairo,  who  left  at  her  death  no  less  than  five 
bushels  of  those  most  secret  of  gems.  I  could  not  keep  my 
eyes  off  that  astounding  old  lady.  She  reciprocated  my 
interest  to  the  degree  of  trying  to  talk  to  me.  Her 
efforts  were  not  very  successful  until  it  transpired  that 
she  came  from  Azerbaijan  and  spoke  the  Turkish  dia- 

173 


PERSIAN  MINIATURES 

lect  of  that  province.  Half  of  this  is  Persian,  to  be  sure, 
and  the  rest  is  gargling.  Nevertheless  I,  knowing  a  little 
of  the  Turkish  of  Stambul,  was  able  to  carry  on  a  broken 
conversation  with  the  happy  proprietor  of  so  magnificent 
a  jewel.  She  inquired  without  forms  how  old  I  was, 
where  my  father  lived,  why  I  had  left  him,  what  I  did  for  a 
living,  how  much  money  I  made  at  it,  and  what  steps  I 
had  taken  against  race-suicide.  And  her  umbrage  at 
hearing  that  I  had  taken  none  was  nothing  to  her  outcries 
over  my  admission  that  although  quite  old  enough  to 
know  better  I  had  found  no  more  respectable  business 
than  writing  stories — and  not  godly  ones.  In  short,  she 
showed  me  my  place,  did  the  lady  of  the  emerald.  But 
if  we  had  not  been  encompassed  by  so  great  a  cloud  of 
witnesses  I  would  have  blurted  out  to  that  frank  old 
Lucrezia  Crivelli  that  I  was  ready  to  reform  and  run 
away  with  her — and  her  emerald. 

It  was  permitted  me,  at  last,  to  enter  more  than  one 
true  Persian  house.  But  no  true  Persian  house  I  entered 
seemed  to  offer  me  quite  so  concentrated  a  flavour  of 
Oriental  hospitality  as  the  one  occupied  by  the  Turkish 
consul.  This  was  partly,  of  course,  because  I  have  more 
in  common  with  a  Turk  than  with  a  Persian,  and  because 
the  speech  of  this  Turk  was  music  to  my  ears  after  the 
accent,  say,  of  the  old  lady  of  the  emerald.  But  a  re- 
ception of  this  more  honey-tongued  old  gentleman,  given 
long  after  I  first  met  him,  left  in  my  memory  quite  the 
most  admirable  among  several  pictures  of  society  in 
Hamadan.  Two  slouchy  local  policemen  stood  guard 
at  the  gate.  Inside  we  were  met  by  a-  fair-haired  Turkish 
soldier  in  a  fez,  looking  very  trim  and  European  in  com- 
parison, who  escorted  us  through  the  garden  to  the  tent 

174 


OLD  WINE  IN  NEW  BOTTLES 

where  His  Excellency — as  he  did  not  mind  being  called — 
received  his  guests.  The  tent  was  really  two  tents,  the 
inner  one  being  a  square  red  canopy  without  flaps,  the 
outer  one  having  flaps  of  embroidery  in  panels,  and 
hanging  rugs  and  Persian  prints  for  further  decoration. 
In  front,  however,  the  flaps  were  reefed  up,  so  as  to  give 
us  the  view  of  the  garden.  And  not  the  least  ornamental 
part  of  this  setting  was  a  long  table  in  front  of  the  tent, 
on  which  stood  symmetrically  spaced  pyramids  of  grapes, 
cherries,  apricots,  and — cucumbers.  For  in  Persia  a 
cucumber  is  regarded  as  a  fruit,  and  as  one  of  the  most 
delicate. 

The  first  thing  was  to  shake  His  Excellency's  hand  and 
to  devise  for  His  Excellency 's  ear  remarks  as  gracious  as 
may  flow  from  an  ill-trained  Anglo-Saxon  tongue.  The 
next  thing  was  to  go  the  round,  not  too  perfunctorily,  of 
a  large  company  of  fezzed,  turbaned,  kolaed,  and  hatted 
sitters  about  His  Excellency.  That  done  chairs  were 
produced.  These  conveniences,  in  fact,  were  the  one  false 
note  of  the  occasion.  We  were  then  served  with  tea  and 
with  a  most  comforting  ice  of  the  morello  cherry.  By 
this  time  there  was  so  little  snow  left  on  Elvend  that  the 
essential  ingredient  of  that  ice,  I  suppose,  must  have 
come  from  the  graveyard  of  the  gallows!  We  were  like- 
wise invited  to  deface  the  beautiful  pyramids  on  the  table, 
but  nobody  had  the  courage  to  do  so.  Nobody  said 
anything,  either,  unless  a  newcomer  joined  the  company 
under  the  tent.  The  most  imposing  person  whose  ar- 
rival we  witnessed  was  the  prince  commandant  of  the 
gendarmerie — a  tall,  slim,  soldierly  looking  Persian  who 
exchanged  with  His  Excellency  salutes  more  magnificent 
than  you  can  conceive.  There  followed,  however,  the 

175 


PERSIAN  MINIATURES 

most  elegant  young  man  in  the  world.  He  wore  white 
duck  trousers,  a  black  broadcloth  coat,  yellow  shoes,  a 
Panama  hat  turned  up  in  front,  a  glistening  black  mous- 
tache, and  a  gold-headed  cane.  And  when  I  saw  that  he 
carried  in  his  other  hand  a  red  red  rose,  he  reminded  me 
so  irresistibly  of  the  gentleman  in  "Patience" — is  it?— 
with  his  affection  a  la  Plato  for  a  bashful  young  potato 
or  a  not  too  French  French  bean,  that  I  nearly  burst  out 
before  all  the  fezzes  and  turbans  and  kolas  and  hats  with : 

"If  he's  content  with  a  vegetable  love,  which  would  certainly 
not  suit  me, 

Why,  what  a  most  particularly  pure  young  man  this  pure 
young  man  must  be!" 

But  that  no  doubt  was  jealousy.  And  they  told  me  that 
he  was  also  a  clever  young  man,  having  been  born  in 
Judaea,  educated  in  Paris,  and  chosen  as  head  of  the 
Behai  school  in  Hamadan,  before  he  came  to  the  Turkish 
consul's  reception. 

How  long  we  sat,  heaven  knows.  We  tried  to  be  as 
polite  as  possible.  At  any  rate,  we  were  late  to  lunch. 


XI 
THE  FACTORY 

To  grapple  effectually  with  even  purely  material  problems  re- 
quires more  serenity  of  mind  and  more  lofty  courage  than  people 
generally  imagine. 

Joseph  Conrad:  AN  OUTPOST  OF  PROGRESS 


IT    IS    an   object   of   vast   curiosity   in    Hamadan — 
to    the    greatest    number   of    eyes,    no   doubt,    be- 
cause  of  the  windmill  that  pokes  its  bald  Amer- 
ican head  above  the  wall.    That  is  a  story,  too: 
the  Odyssey  of  that  windmill  by  train,  ship,  and  camel, 
from  young  Chicago  to  New  York,  Port  Said,  Basra, 
Baghdad,    Kermanshah,   and  old   Ecbatana,   where  an 
exiled  French  chauffeur  set  it  a-spinning  in  the  Persian 
air.     People  come  from  miles  around  to  admire  that 

177 


PERSIAN  MINIATURES 

handiwork  of  the  Firengi,  which  pumps  up  the  unwilling 
water  of  the  East  for  the  dyeing  of  rugs  to  be  laid  on 
Western  floors.  After  that  far-flown  bird  had  wagged 
its  tail  for  some  months  in  the  gusts  of  Elvend,  it  was 
thought  advisable  to  deepen  the  well  out  of  which  the 
water  a  little  too  unwillingly  rose.  Well-diggers  were 
accordingly  called,  their  craft  being  a  common  one  in 
this  country  of  hidden  streams.  And  there  came  a  day 
when  one  well-digger,  in  a  fit  of  spite,  kicked  another 
well-digger  into  the  seventy-foot  shaft.  If  you  will  be- 
lieve it,  nothing  untoward  happened  to  him  who  tumbled 
seventy  feet.  But  he  who  did  the  kicking  was  taken 
by  the  police  and  bastinadoed  on  his  too  impulsive  soles. 
As  for  me — so  doth  the  world  move  by  contraries!— 
almost  anything  else  in  the  factory  compound  interests 
me  more  than  the  windmill.  The  well-diggers,  for  in- 
stance, through  whose  dusty  rags  I  first  learned  that 
khaki  is  a  pure  Persian  word,  meaning  earth-coloured. 
Shall  I  be  pedantic  enough  to  add  that  the  I  is  there  for  a 
reason,  and  that  the  Persians  accent  the  last  syllable? 
The  piling  up  of  mud  pies  into  the  new  dye  fiouse  chimney^ 
interests  me,  too,  to  say  nothing  of  the  beautiful  groined 
vaulting  of  that  house,  in  light  brick.  A  Persian  can  do 
anything  with  earth,  water,  and  his  ten  fingers,  so  sure  in 
him  is  the  inheritance  of  those  who  first  devised  the  secret 
of  the  dome.  The  old  dye  house  is  also  something  to  see, 
where  huge  copper  kettles  bubble  over  fires  of  poplar  and 
tapel.  Nor  are  the  dyes  aniline  that  bubble  in  those 
kettles.  They  are  alizarin,  if  you  must  know,  against 
which  no  man  can  complain  that  they  run  or  fade.  If 
there  be  room  for  complaint,  it  is  that  the  colours  con- 
cocted by  the  ingenious  Firengi  out  of  coaltar  and  heaven 


THE  FACTORY 

knows  what  are  not  always  the  same  as  the  colours  which 
the  Persians  of  the  old  time  extracted  from  the  herbs 
and  barks  of  their  own  valleys.  Many  of  them,  that  is, 
are  not  simple  colours,  such  as  the  Orientals  instinctively 
know  how  to  put  together,  but  complicated  colours,  veiled 
colours,  shadows  and  ashes  of  colours,  subtly  calculated 
to  soothe  the  neurasthenic  souls  of  the  West.  But  these 
are  matters  of  which  I  am  not  competent  to  speak.  I 
can  only  tell  how  the  dripping  hanks  of  wool  are  carried 
away  to  dry  in  a  sun  without  veil  or  shadow.  Then  they 
are  piled  in  a  storehouse  according  to  their  kinds — in 
the  care  of  an  Armenian  mir^a  who  has  been  to  America, 
and  who  has  brought  back  a  hat  and  a  twang. 

What  interests  me  most,  however,  is  the  long  low  mud 
building  where  the  wool  goes  last,  to  be  snipped  up  and 
artfully  knotted  into  patterns.  The  room  where  those 
patterns  are  plotted  out  is  at  the  lighter  and  more  public 
end  of  the  house.  Here  black-capped  mir^as  sit  around  a 
long  table,  busy  over  water-colours  and  sheets  of  squared 
paper  and  samples  of  dyed  wool  and  pieces  wickedly  cut 
out  of  old  rugs.  The  head  of  the  designing  room  is  a 
man  of  forty,  perhaps,  with  a  singular  face,  both  dark  and 
pale,  distinguished  and  ravaged.  He  smokes  a  miskal 
of  opium  a  day.  But  he  can  take  one  look  at  a  carpet 
and  reproduce  it  for  you  in  water  colour,  with  all  the 
brightness  and  delicacy  of  the  old  miniatures.  In  fact, 
he  paints  miniatures  himself,  after  that  charming  old 
Persian  tradition  which  is  not  yet  dead,  mounting  them 
on  mats  of  cunningly  contrasted  colours,  spattered  with 
gold.  So  I  am  the  more  willing  to  take  Mr.  F.  R.  Mar- 
tin's word  for  it  that  Behzad  and  the  other  miniaturists 
of  the  fifteenth  and  sixteenth  centuries  may  have  designed 

179 


PERSIAN  MINIATURES 

the  magnificent  carpets  of  the  early  Safevi  period.  The 
other  mir^as  are  younger,  some  of  them  no  more  than 
twelve  or  fifteen.  The  big  mir^as  paint  entire  designs, 
in  the  exact  colours  which  the  weavers  are  to  use — such 
designs  as  Persians  have  always  painted,  save  when  some 
Firengi  desolates  them  by  ordering  a  vast  carpet  which 
is  nothing  but  a  border  around  a  central  desert  of  pink 
or  blue,  empty  and  flowerless  as  a  billiard  board.  The 
little  mir^as  paint  the  actual  working  patterns,  copying  en- 
larged sections  of  the  design  on  paper  of  which  each  square 
stands  for  a  knot  or  a  fixed  number  of  knots.  They  all 
have  lean,  dark,  intelligent-looking  faces,  and  such  thin, 
long,  intelligent-looking  fingers.  After  seeing  the  hands 
which  so  many  Persians  have  I  can  understand  how  it  is 
that  so  many  beautiful  things  have  come  out  of  Persia, 
and  how  neither  time  nor  misfortune  has  been  able 
quite  to  do  away  with  the  tradition  of  them. 

The  greater  part  of  the  building  is  the  factory  proper. 
They  tell  me  that  it  is  the  first  establishment  of  its  kind 
in  Persia.  People  have  always  made  rugs  there,  of  course, 
but  they  have  not  always  made  them  outside  of  their  own 
homes;  and  least  of  all  have  women  been  accustomed  to 
do  so  strange  a  thing.  The  thing  was  so  strange,  for  a 
Firengi  to  think  of  building  a  great  house  and  hiring  wo- 
men to  weave  for  him,  and  Persians  are  so  sensitive  about 
their  women,  that  the  affair  had  to  be  gone  about  very 
diplomatically.  The  Slneikh  ul  Islam,  who  is  the  chief 
religious  functionary  of  a  Persian  town,  had  first  to  be 
approached  with  all  possible  deference  and  ceremony. 
He  then  had  to  call  together  his  associates  in  the  cult, 
and  deliberate  whether  there  were  anything  in  law  or 
divinity  to  forbid  the  proposed  innovation.  It  was  at 

180 


THE  FACTORY 

last  decided  that  the  ladies  of  Hamadan  might  work  for 
the  Firengi  without  losing  their  reputations,  in  case  the 
Firengi  took  due  steps  to  insure  their  privacy.  To  this 
end  all  communication  between  the  wool  room  and  the 
room  of  the  looms  was  limited  to  a  hole  in  the  wall, 
rather  like  a  post-office  slot.  Furthermore,  since  the 
master  weaver  was  a  man,  and  since  it  was  necessary  for 
the  Firengi  or  his  deputies  occasionally  to  make  inspec- 
tions, a  chaperon  was  appointed  from  among  the  elders  of 
Hamadan.  This  chaperon  is  a  man  of  God,  of  canonical 
age,  who  receives  a  stipend  from  the  Firengi  and  whose 
duty  it  is  to  circulate  among  the  looms  for  the  mainte- 
nance of  decorum  and  good  manners  and  for  the  safeguard- 
ing of  the  honour  of  the  husbands  of  Hamadan.  For  the 
greater  peace  of  mind  of  the  latter  it  is  known  that  the 
master  weaver  is  also  a  man  of  God,  wearing  the  green 
turban  of  the  seed  of  the  Prophet  and  being  addressed 
as  Sheikh.  He,  as  it  happens,  is  no  Hamadani,  but 
from  Tabriz.  For  you  may  be  surprised  to  learn  that 
Hamadan  is  not  a  city  of  weavers.  It  may  once  have 
been;  but  if  it  becomes  so  again,  thanks  will  be  due  to 
the  Firengi. 

I  am  happy  to  report  that  under  these  conditions  no 
scandal  has  arisen  to  trouble  the  relations  of  East  and 
West.  There  was,  to  be  sure,  the  affair  of  a  certain  Mrs. 
Potiphar,  who  complained  that  an  Armenian  or  Jewish 
mir^a  had  insulted  her  while  handing  out  wool  through 
the  hole  in  the  wall.  This  news  caused  an  immediate 
exodus  from  the  factory,  and  the  Governor  felt  it  necessary 
to  make  an  investigation.  The  insult,  however,  was 
evidently  too  deep  for  words.  While  Mrs.  Potiphar  was 
unable  to  utter  it,  she  did  specify  the  day  and  the  hour  on 

181 


PERSIAN  MINIATURES 

which  it  passed  through  the  slit  of  the  wool  room,  as  well 
as  the  name  of  the  offending  mir^a.  That,  somehow  or 
other,  she  knew!  But,  as  it  happened,  Joseph  was  able 
to  prove  so  good  an  alibi  that  the  charge  fell  to  the  ground 
and  the  disquieted  husbands  allowed  their  wives  to  re- 
turn. 

Having  been  duly  advised  of  these  matters,  I,  as  a 
friend  of  the  manager,  was  permitted  by  the  white- 
turbaned  chaperon  to  visit  the  sacred  precinct  of  the 
looms.  I  found  there  no  whirring  belts  or  clattering 
mechanisms  of  steel,  as  certain  pessimistic  writers  on  rugs 
had  half  led  me  to  expect.  In  this  factory,  as  in  all  others 
of  its  kind  in  Persia,  there  are  no  other  belts  than  those 
encircling  Persian  waists,  and  only  such  motor  power  as 
works  most  efficiently  on  tea  and  pilau.  There  are,  to 
be  sure,  rows  of  imposing  looking  appliances,  of  which 
the  most  imposing  are  the  pairs  of  big  poplar  posts  that 
contain  the  warp  of  a  loom.  The  threads  of  this  warp 
hang  perpendicularly  from  a  fixed  transverse  beam  at  the 
top  to  a  movable  transverse  beam  at  the  bottom,  on 
which  the  rug  is  wound  up  as  it  grows  in  length.  There  is 
also  a  smaller  transverse  stick,  running  in  and  out  be- 
tween the  threads  and  separating  them  enough  for  the 
insertion  of  a  hand  shuttle  which  carries  the  thread  of  the 
woof  between  each  row  of  knots.  Add  to  this  a  pair  of 
shears  for  cutting  wool  and  a  sort  of  heavy,  iron-handled 
comb  for  beating  down  the  knots  and  the  cross  threads, 
and  you  have  all  that  is  mechanical  in  the  making  of  a 
rug.  There  remains  only  the  narrow  wooden  platform 
on  which  the  weavers  squat  and  which  if  they  like  can 
climb  the  uprights,  by  means  of  pegs,  as  their  work  grows 
up  the  loom. 

182 


THE  FACTORY 

The  rest  is  a  matter  of  clever  Persian  fingers.  And  how 
fast  they  can  fly !  They  are  all  plentifully  reddened  with 
henna,  I  notice.  So  are  the  bare  feet  tucked  up  on  the 
little  platforms — the  gay  green  slippers  appertaining 
thereto,  those  humming-bird  slippers  I  saw  in  the  Bazaar, 
being  neatly  set  out  in  rows  on  the  mud  floor  below.  The 
number  of  weavers  varies,  of  course,  according  to  the  size 
of  the  rug,  but  each  one  has  about  a  yard  and  a  half  to 
attend  to.  Every  loom  is  in  charge  of  an  ustad,  a  fore- 
woman, who  has  the  design  in  hand.  She  ties  the  bound- 
ary knots,  telling  her  crew  how  many  knots  of  such  and 
such  a  colour  to  add.  She  is  more  than  likely  to  have  a 
baby  crowing — on  occasion  read  bawling — on  the  platform 
beside  her,  or  on  the  mud  floor  among  the  slippers.  Many 
of  the  weavers  are  no  more  than  babies  themselves,  for 
that  matter.  I  remember  one  pickaninny  of  eight  or  nine 
who  giggled  as  the  manager  went  by  and  pointed  out  a 
yellow  chicken  she  had  put  into  the  blue  border  of  a  great 
carpet,  between  two  stately  flowerpots  of  flowers.  The 
ustad  was  for  making  her  ravel  it  out ;  but  the  wise  manager 
let  it  stay.  Such  irregularities  are  one  of  the  charms  of  an 
Oriental  rug — all  too  rare  when  measurements  are  taken 
and  wool  dyed  evenly  as  it  is  here.  And  a  pickaninny 
capable  of  inventing  a  chicken  has  weaving  in  her  blood, 
even  if  Hamadan  is  not  a  city  of  weavers.  These  ladies 
seemed  not  too  greatly  distressed  at  the  approach  of  per- 
sons of  the  designing  sex.  There  would  be  a  great  twitch- 
ing up  over  the  head  of  those  loose  white  or  coloured  sheets 
which  are  the  less  formal  shield  of  virtue,  but  there  would 
also  be  craned  necks  and  visions  of  a  high  olive  cheek-bone 
or  of  a  blistering  black  eye.  And  from  the  chatter  shrill- 
ing between  loom  and  loom  it  was  evident  that  no  one 


PERSIAN  MINIATURES 

stood  in  too  great  awe  of  the  turbaned  censor  of  mor- 
als. 

The  sex  is  always  temperamental,  but  in  this  factory 
the  unhappy  manager  is  often  put  beside  himself  with  the 
whims  of  the  daughters  of  Iran.  It  is  a  very  human  trait, 
in  all  parts  of  the  world,  to  take  the  line  that  the  company 
is  rich  and  can  afford  to  stretch  a  point.  Therefore  no 
weaver  ever  takes  the  trouble  to  save  wool,  which  is  the 
most  serious  item  of  rug  making.  The  different  colours 
naturally  have  to  be  dyed  in  different  hanks.  To  make  a 
knot  of  a  required  colour  a  bit  is  cut  off;  when  the  knot  is 
tied  the  two  ends  are  cut  again;  and  when  the  rug  leaves 
the  loom  the  rough  surface  has  to  be  clipped  smooth  by  an 
experienced  hand.  All  this  wastes  a  good  deal  of  wool, 
which  is  practically  useless  because  it  is  already  dyed  and 
too  short  to  use  again.  But  can  you  induce  the  women  to 
cut  off  no  more  than  they  need  to  tie  their  knot?  Never! 
Nor  could  the  manager  persuade  them  to  use  a  pair  of  clip- 
pers he  invented,  to  cut  the  knots  of  uniform  length.  The 
weavers  have,  too,  a  great  way  of  borrowing  wool  from 
each  other,  and  of  not  being  too  careful  to  get  the  colour 
they  need,  in  order  to  save  a  journey  to  the  hole  in  the 
wall.  They  have  also  been  known  to  borrow  wool  from 
the  factory  and  not  to  return  it,  carrying  it  off  under  their 
loose  clothes  when  they  go  home  at  night.  There  conse- 
quently came  a  day  when  the  decree  went  forth  that  each 
loom  was  to  be  provided  with  a  box,  containing  wool 
enough  for  the  carpet  in  hand,  of  which  the  ustad  was 
to  keep  the  key  and  to  be  allowed  to  take  home  the  excess 
or  compelled  to  make  up  any  deficiency.  This  caused  a 
terrible  upheaval,  being  not  only  a  reflection  on  a  lady's 
honour  but  a  reason  to  make  her  suspect  that  the  factory 

184 


THE  FACTORY 

intended  to  cheat  her  of  her  due  amount  of  wool.  At  the 
end  of  that  day  some  one  wailed:  "Whoever  comes  to- 
morrow will  have  a  bad  name!"  On  the  morrow,  ac- 
cordingly, out  of  three  hundred  women,  twenty  came  to 
work.  And  it  took  both  time  and  argument  to  convince 
them  that  the  manager  really  knew  how  much  wool  went 
into  a  carpet  of  a  given  size  and  would  see  that  they  got 
enough. 

What  is  less  comprehensible  is  that  they  will  not  take 
care  of  the  carpet  they  are  weaving.  The  new  mud  roof 
of  the  factory  leaked  villainously,  as  a  new  mud  roof  will. 
The  weavers  regarded  it  as  so  much  a  matter  of  course  that 
they  would  not  take  the  trouble  to  report  the  presence  of  a 
pool  under  a  loom  or  of  the  mildew  which  would  gather  on 
the  rug  above  it.  The  consequence  was  that  certain 
carpets  were  almost  ruined  before  they  were  finished. 
Great  pieces  had  to  be  cut  out  and  knotted  in  again.  I 
don't  know  whether  the  ustad  foresaw  more  labour  and 
therefore  more  pay  for  herself.  The  working  of  the  fem- 
inine mind  is  past  finding  out. 

Another  time  a  long  slash  was  discovered  in  the  middle 
of  a  carpet  that  had  been  months  on  the  loom.  The 
manager  at  once  caused  it  to  be  announced  that  no  one 
would  be  paid  until  he  found  out  who  had  cut  that  carpet. 
At  first  nobody  believed  him;  but  when  the  painful  fact 
became  plain  that  he  meant  what  he  said,  information  was 
taken  him  that  a  certain  Mrs.  Angel  had  done  the  wicked 
deed,  a  certain  Mrs.  Parrot  having  been  witness  thereof. 
On  interrogation,  both  Mrs.  Angel  and  Mrs.  Parrot  denied 
knowledge  .of  any  carpet  cutting.  Tears  and  outcries 
followed,  and  loud  general  demands  for  pay  withheld. 
The  manager  stood  firm,  however — until  Mrs.  Angel 


PERSIAN  MINIATURES 

went  so  far  as  to  admit  that  she  had  incited  Mrs.  Parrot 
to  slash  the  carpet.  Mrs.  Parrot  indignantly  repudiated 
the  insinuation.  More  tears  and  more  lamentations! 
And  at  last  the  force  of  public  opinion  compelled  Mrs. 
Angel  to  confess  herself  the  culprit.  Having  a  grudge 
against  Mrs.  Parrot,  she  had  thought  to  settle  it  by  de- 
facing the  latter's  carpet.  "But  what  can  the  Firengi 
do  to  me?"  she  boastfully  demanded  of  her  companions. 
What  the  Firengi  did  to  her  was  to  dock  her  of  ten  tomans 
of  her  pay.  He  then  called  in  the  elderly  chaperon,  who 
gave  her  a  wigging  of  the  first  class  and  applied  twenty- 
five  stripes  to  her  peccant  hands,  she  sobbing  out  at  each 
blow:  "I  was  at  fault!"  If  the  Firengi  had  wielded  the 
switch,  there  might  have  been  a  massacre  in  Hamadan. 
As  it  was,  Mr.  Angel  saw  to  it  that  Mrs.  Angel  worked 
out  her  ten  tomans.  And  after  that  there  was  no  more 
carpet  slashing. 

Wherein  the  weavers  most  fill  the  heart  of  the  Firengi 
with  despair  is  their  capriciousness  about  turning  up  at 
the  factory.  He  has  room  for  seven  hundred  of  them, 
but  he  is  happy  if  he  can  find  half  that  number  at  the 
looms  on  any  given  day.  Not  angels,  powers,  or  princi- 
palities, not  even  the  censor  of  morals,  can  induce  them 
to  work  six  days  a  week,  rest  on  Friday,  and  then  come 
back  for  six  days  more.  A  religious  anniversary  falls  due, 
a  visitor  comes  to  call,  they  are  invited  to  a  picnic,  or  a 
husband  pinches  their  cheek,  and  they  stay  at  home — while 
their  carpet  hangs  idle  on  the  loom  and  dealers  in  Firengi- 
stan  telegraph  angrily  about  delays  in  filling  contracts. 
They  like  money  as  much  as  any  one;  but  a  toman  in 
hand  is  worth  ten  in  the  cashier's  safe.  Threats,  bonuses, 
the  most  glittering  picture  of  the  advantageous  position 

1 86 


THE  FACTORY 

of  the  capitalist,  are  nothing  to  them.  It  is,  of  course,  a 
thing  to  turn  the  hair  gray.  But  do  you  know?  In 
my  secret  heart  I  fear  I  am  on  the  side  of  the  weavers. 

One  day  the  compound  was  all  agog,  for  His  Highness 
the  Governor  came  to  inspect  the  factory.  He  deigned 
to  admire  the  dye  house,  the  store  house,  the  designing 
room,  the  wool  room,  Mrs.  Potiphar's  slit  in  the  wall,  Mrs. 
Angel's  loom,  everything.  Most  of  all,  I  think,  he  admired 
the  windmill  from  Chicago.  And  just  as  he  was  going 
away  an  old  forewoman  burst  out  in  front  of  him. 

"The  Firengi — what  God  does  will! — gives  us  bread," 
she  cried  out  inconveniently.  "What  are  you  going  to 
do  for  us?  Will  you  make  it  cheaper?" 

What  he  did  for  them,  poor  wretch,  was  to  fly  for  his 
life. 


187 


XII 
THE  SATRAP 

Noble  and  mild  this  Persian  seems  to  be, 

If  outward  habit  judge  the  inward  man. 

Christopher  Marlowe:  THE  TRAGEDY  OF  TAMBURLAINE  THE  GREAT 

THE  Governor's  palace  is  outwardly  indistin- 
guishable as  such.  One  entrance  of  it,  to  be 
sure,  opens  on  a  small  square,  which  is  generally 
full  of  drying  towels  from  a  public  bath.  The 
entrance  we  made  for  was  at  the  bottom  of  a  blind  alley, 
whence  an  inner  lane  bounded  by  high  mud  walls  led  to  a 
second  gateway.  Here  lounged  a  company  of  rather 
slouchy-looking  individuals  who  regarded  us  with  some 
uncertainty.  For  although  we  had  conformed  to  the 
etiquette  of  the  country  in  making  an  appointment  for  our 
audience,  we  had  been  simple  enough  to  think,  being 
three  men  sound  of  wind  and  limb,  that  we  needed  no  pro- 
tecting retinue  at  our  heels.  However,  we  indisputably 
wore  hats,  which  proved  us  to  be  persons  of  a  certain 
degree  of  consequence.  Accordingly  a  gentleman  in  a 
dirty  red  coat,  carrying  a  silver-headed  mace,  wished  us 
peace  and  led  us  into  a  courtyard  with  a  big  oblong  pool 
in  the  centre  of  it,  up  a  steep  flight  of  stone  steps  at  the 
farther  end  of  the  court,  through  a  high  talar,  and  to  the 
door  of  an  anteroom.  More  slouchy-looking  persons 
lounged  about  it,  having  rather  the  aspect  of  masters 

1 88 


THE  SATRAP 

of  the  pen  than  of  the  sword.  In  their  hands  Silverstick 
abandoned  us,  to  be  divested  of  our  hats,  coats,  and  ga- 
loshes— most  indispensable  article  of  attire  in  Persia, 
where  everybody  takes  off  his  shoes  before  going  into  the 
house.  We  were  then  passed  by  a  sentry  with  a  fixed 
bayonet  over  his  shoulder  into  a  second  anteroom.  More 
loungers — some  mir%as,  some  interviewing  them  on  affairs 
of  state.  One  of  the  mir^as  knocked  softly  at  an  inner 
door,  and  we  were  admitted  into  the  presence  of  the  Satrap 
himself. 

East  and  West  were  curiously  mingled  in  the  sanctum 
of  His  Highness.  The  L-shaped  room  was  carpeted  with 
big  rugs,  the  white  walls  of  it  were  broken  by  niches  suc- 
ceeding each  other  at  regular  intervals,  the  windows  that 
looked  out  on  the  court  and  the  big  pool  were  multitudi- 
nously  glazed  with  those  little  Persian  panes.  Above  them 
were  smaller  windows  of  stained  glass  whose  larger  square 
panes  stood  on  their  corners,  diamondwise.  The  Satrap, 
however,  while  younger  than  a  Satrap  should  be  and 
dressed  in  a  tight  Persian  coat  with  official  brass  buttons, 
sat  not  on  the  floor  but  on  a  chair,  behind  nothing  less 
exotic  than  a  desk  of  new  Persia.  Old  Persia  sat  beside 
him,  albeit  on  another  chair,  in  the  person  of  a  Seid,  a 
descendant  of  the  Prophet,  with  a  round  gray  beard  and 
a  green  turban.  But  this  benevolent  personage  did  not 
disdain  to  follow  the  example  of  His  Highness  and  shake 
our  polluting  hands. 

What  struck  me  most  was  His  Highnesses  excellent  Eng- 
lish. I  knew  he  was  not  a  very  distant  cousin  of  the  Shah 
and  a  member  of  the  same  Kajar  tribe  that  seized  the 
throne  of  Persia  after  the  death  of  Nadir  Shah,  in  the 
period  of  our  own  revolution.  I  did  not  know  until  he 

189 


PERSIAN  MINIATURES 

told  us  so  that  this  Perso-Turkoman  prince  had  been 
educated  at  Harrow  and  Sandhurst.  And  there,  among 
other  sciences,  he  acquired  that  of  football !  But  he  was 
highly  amused  by  the  Sah'b's  suggestion  that  he  take  part 
in  the  matches  got  up  by  the  Englishmen  of  Hamadan. 
He  said  he  might  think  about  it  if  the  games  were  played 
behind  a  wall  instead  of  in  an  open  field.  That  the  Reis 
himself,  manager  of  the  Bank  and  regarded  by  the  Per- 
sians as  the  official  chief  of  our  colony,  could  so  far  forget 
his  dignity  as  to  muddy  himself  in  these  ignoble  scrim- 
mages, was  no  doubt  an  inexplicable  mystery  to  the  black 
hats  who  used  to  crowd  the  side  lines. 

On  His  Highness's  table  my  wandering  eye  was  not 
slow  to  detect  a  copy  Of  the  London  Times.  Shall  I 
confess  that  I  was  rude  enough  to  wonder  if,  by  any  chance, 
it  might  be  our  own — which  had  failed  to  arrive  by  the  last 
post?  All  our  telegrams,  at  any  rate,  pass  under  His 
Highness's  eye  before  reaching  their  destination.  Letters 
are  rather  too  numerous  and  too  strangely  written.  Be- 
sides, as  they  come  from  Baku  and  travel  up  country  over 
the  Russian  road,  the  Russians  might  have  something  to 
say  about  that.  But  it  is  a  perpetual  mystery  what  be- 
comes of  so  many  copies  of  the  Times,  to  say  nothing  of  so 
many  more  copies  of  the  Graphic  and  other  illustrated 
papers.  And  whenever  they  fail  to  turn  up  we  somehow 
think  of  the  Governor — though  we  do  not  forget,  either, 
that  the  Postmaster  has  a  fair  knowledge  of  the  Roman 
alphabet. 

As  the  old  gentleman  in  the  green  turban  lacked  the 
Satrap's  gift  of  tongues,  His  Highness  was  perfectly  safe  in 
confiding  to  us  that  he  detested  Hamadan,  finding  it  the 
worst  city  in  Persia.  He  suspected  me  of  trying  to  pro- 

190 


THE  SATRAP 

duce  some  belated  good  manners  when  I  told  him  that  I 
liked  Hamadan  very  much,  and  that  one  of  the  things  I 
liked  most  about  it  was  the  lack  of  trams  and  carriages. 
He  answered  that  he  had  hopes  of  widening  and  paving 
certain  of  the  principal  streets — and  he  has  since  done  so, 
I  hear  to  my  regret.  In  the  meantime  he  announced  to 
us  one  innovation  he  had  in  mind,  namely  an  edict  to  the 
effect  that  every  citizen  should  thereafter  hang  a  lantern 
outside  his  house  at  night.  But  we  later  had  occasion  to 
notice  that  the  Hamadanis  were  not  too  prompt  in  re- 
sponding to  this  recommendation.  Indeed  I  blush  to  add 
that  our  own  lane  might  have  been  full  of  thieves,  wolves, 
and  every  manner  of  obscure  deed,  for  all  we  did  to  illum- 
inate its  darkness. 

Harrow  and  Sandhurst  may  be  partly  responsible  for 
these  enlightened  notions.  I  fancy,  though,  that  the  illus- 
trious example  of  His  Highnesses  Papa  entered  into  the 
matter.  This  powerful  personage  is  himself  a  Satrap,  and 
a  greater  one,  who  not  only  has  widened  the  streets  of  his 
own  capital  and  embellished  them  with  public  buildings, 
but  who  maintains  one  of  the  best  brass  bands  in  Asia, 
capable  of  executing  Bizet,  Sousa,  or  even  Irving  Berlin  for 
all  I  know.  I  never  had  the  pleasure  of  listening  to  it.  I 
have,  however,  had  the  pleasure  of  hearing  many  stories 
about  this  musically  inclined  old  gentleman,  who  is  warden 
of  the  Mesopotamian  marches.  I  never  took  in  before  I 
went  there  that  Persia  is  propped  up  so  high  above  the 
rest  of  the  world,  or  that  part  of  the  world  which  lies  to  the 
west  of  it.  To  climb  into  this  country  of  the  sky  is  never 
a  simple  matter,  as  they  know  best  who  have  travelled  from 
the  Persian  Gulf  to  Shiraz.  On  the  west  there  are  only 
two  places  where  the  thing  can  be  done  with  any  ease. 

191 


PERSIAN  MINIATURES 

One  of  them  is  in  the  north,  near  Lake  Urumia,  where  the 
old  caravan  trail  went  from  Trebizond  to  Tabriz.  The 
other  is  the  older  and  steeper  caravan  trail  which  threads 
the  passes  of  the  Zagros  range  between  Baghdad,  or  Khani- 
kin,  and  Kermanshah.  The  trans-Caucasian  railway  has 
taken  away  the  glory  of  the  Trebizond-Tabriz  route, 
about  which  Xenophon  knew  something,  and  which  Marco 
Polo  travelled  in  his  day.  But  the  Baghdad- Kermanshah 
route  is  still  the  one — or  was  before  the  war — by  which 
English  and  Indian  cottons  and  teas,  after  sailing  up  the 
Tigris  to  Baghdad,  transship  themselves  to  camel  back  and 
climb  the  ladders  of  Persia.  Now  those  passes  are  not 
only  the  borderland  between  Mesopotamia  and  Persia, 
but  they  are  also  the  borderland  between  two  of  the  most 
redoubtable  tribes  in  Persia,  the  Kurds  and  the  Lurs. 
These  good  people  have  a  habit  of  pouncing  down  on 
caravans,  as  they  wend  their  toilsome  way  through  the 
stony  defiles,  and  of  either  pillaging  them  to  the  quick  or 
extorting  from  them  a  ransom  of  so  much  a  camel.  The 
current  rate  before  the  war  ran  from  six  to  twelve  krans 
an  animal.  It  is  whispered,  however,  that  the  musical 
warden  of  the  marches  is  not  altogether  a  stranger  to 
these  operations,  and  that  he  is  capable  of  taking  from  the 
tribesmen  his  fifty  to  ninety  per  cent,  of  the  proceeds  of 
their  enterprise. 

Picturesque  as  these  operations  are,  they  are  looked  at 
somewhat  coldly  by  the  English,  whose  Persian  trade  in 
the  four  years  before  the  war  fell  off  $  1,000,000 — notwith- 
standing the  fact  that  they  are  said  to  pay  Satrap  Senior 
30,000  tomans  a  year  to  keep  the  passes  open.  On  the 
other  hand,  the  Russians  are  said  to  pay  him  60,000 
tomans  a  year  to  keep  the  passes  closed !  When  things  get 

192 


THE  SATRAP 

too  difficult  for  him  he  resigns.  And  then  no  one  gets 
through  the  passes  at  all,  for  love  or  money.  He  is  there- 
upon reappointed,  as  he  was  for  the  eighth  time  while  I  was 
in  Hamadan.  During  the  same  year  the  English  paid  the 
Lurs  a  matter  of  £400  to  let  alone  a  party  of  engineers  who 
wanted  to  survey  a  possible  route  for  a  railway  between 
the  Karun,  the  only  navigable  river  in  Persia,  and  a  town 
in  the  region  of  Kermanshah  called  Khorremabad.  Where- 
upon some  one  else  paid  the  Lurs  more  to  keep  the  sur- 
veyors out.  At  any  rate,  they  broke  their  agreement  with 
the  English.  Another  highly  interesting  example  of  the 
working,  under  the  old  regime,  of  the  Anglo-Russian 
Agreement  of  1907 — and  perhaps  of  the  Potsdam  Agree- 
ment of  1910. 

I  do  not  pretend  to  know  whether  these  things  be  true. 
I  am  merely  quoting  current  gossip — which  further  re- 
ports that  Satrap  Senior  is  an  exceedingly  well-to-do  and 
exceedingly  thrifty  old  gentleman.  He  maintains,  never- 
theless, as  becomes  a  prince  of  the  blood  and  a  warden  of 
marches,  a  standing  army  of  his  own.  And  whenever  he 
takes  the  field  with  his  army  at  his  heels  it  is  miraculous 
how  quickly  the  passes  open — not  to  mention  how  gener- 
ous the  mountain  chiefs  become  of  their  flocks  and  herds. 
As  for  Satrap  Junior,  he  suffers  under  the  double  disad- 
vantage of  being  a  much  younger  man  than  the  Kara- 
Gozlu  grandees  of  Hamadan  and  of  having  no  profitable 
passes  under  his  jurisdiction.  At  any  rate,  the  Russians 
have  kindly  relieved  him  of  the  responsibilities  of  Sultan 
Bulagh.  He  complained  bitterly  to  us  that  he  had  a 
budget  of  only  500  tomans  a  month,  out  of  which  he  could 
not  possibly  defray  his  personal  expenses,  let  alone  beauti- 
fying the  town.  It  was  not  he,  however,  who  told  us  the 

193 


PERSIAN  MINIATURES 

tale  of  his  bodyguard  of  twenty  horsemen.  Emulous  no 
doubt  of  his  celebrated  parent,  he  sent  in  to  the  Rets- 
i-Malie1ot  the  local  representative  of  the  Treasury  Depart- 
ment, a  bill  for  the  pay  and  upkeep  of  fifty  cavaliers.  The 
Reis-i-Malieh,  who  is  one  of  Mr.  Shuster's  old  lieutenants 
and  an  honest  man,  asked  first  to  see  a  review  of  the  troop. 
The  troop  was  accordingly  reviewed,  and  among  its  mem- 
bers the  Reis-i-Malieb  and  his  friends  recognised  various 
rowdies  and  idlers  of  the  Bazaar.  These,  being  privately 
questioned,  replied  without  any  hesitation  that  they  had 
been  offered  five  krans  apiece  to  appear  on  that  place  and 
day,  mounted,  in  order  to  swell  the  Satrap's  train.  The 
Reis-i-Malieh  therefore  refused  to  honour  the  requisition 
of  His  Highness — who  thought  best  not  to  press  his  claim. 
So  who  shall  say  that  Mr.  Shuster  went  to  Persia  in  vain! 
As  my  two  companions  were  interested  in  rugs,  the 
conversation  turned  to  that  topic.  The  Satrap  professed 
a  desire  to  follow  in  the  footsteps  of  his  illustrious  father, 
who  had  so  forwarded  the  manufacture  of  rugs  in  Kerman- 
shah.  He  added  that  the  weavers  there  are  not  women 
but  men  and  boys,  who  instead  of  working  from  a  painted 
pattern  follow  instructions  that  are  sung  to  them  by  a 
foreman,  in  some  old  technical  language  which  is  no  longer 
understood  outside  the  profession.  At  this  the  Sah'b 
and  his  friend  looked  so  flabbergasted  that  I  rushed  in 
where  they  feared  to  tread  and  asked  His  Highness  if  he 
collected  rugs.  My  question  diverted  him  as  much  as 
if  I  had  asked  the  Mayor  of  Brockton  if  he  collected  boots. 
For  I  had  yet  to  learn  that  rugs  are  as  much  a  matter  of 
course  in  Persia  as  kolas.  Everybody  has  them,  from  the 
richest  to  the  poorest,  and  nobody  sentimentalises  over 
them.  And  I  also  had  yet  to  learn  why  the  Sah'b  looked 

194 


THE  SATRAP 

so  flabbergasted  when  His  Highness  spoke  of  the  rugs  of 
Kermanshah.  But  that  you  shall  not  learn  till  the  next 
chapter. 

In  the  meantime  we  were  served  two  rounds  of  tea,  in 
European  cups,  but  without  the  European  horror  of 
cream.  Those  cups,  I  suppose,  were  instituted  for  the 
peace  of  mind  of  the  old  Seid,  who  drank  his  tea  out 
of  a  glass  in  the  proper  way,  distracted  by  no  doubt  as 
to  whether  his  second  glass  had  been  defiled  by  Christian 
lips.  Then  we  took  leave,  without  asking  permission  to 
do  so  in  the  ceremonious  Persian  way — and  without  being 
assured,  in  consequence,  that  His  Highnesses  house  had 
been  purified  by  our  presence,  his  ills  forgotten,  or  his 
fortune  increased. 

There  followed  an  awful  moment  in  the  anteroom,  when 
after  being  inducted  into  our  hats,  coats,  and  galoshes, 
we  discovered  that  we  could  scrape  up  between  us  no 
more  than  seventeen  krans  for  tips.  These,  nevertheless, 
we  bestowed  upon  the  attendant  underlings  with  an  air  of 
immense  generosity.  But  the  worst  was  that  we  had 
nothing  left  for  Silverstick,  who  stalked  majestically  in 
front  of  us,  clearing  a  way  with  his  mace  through  a  crowd 
of  moss-troopers  at  the  gate  and  escorting  us  as  far  as 
the  square.  His  expression,  on  parting  from  Firengis 
who  were  too  poor  to  be  accompanied  by  so  much  as  one 
servant  or  to  find  in  their  pockets  so  much  as  one  kran 
for  the  Governor's  gate-keeper,  was  something  to  re- 
member. 

As  for  the  Satrap,  he  never  returned  our  call.  He  no 
doubt  heard  the  report  of  Silverstick,  and  took  the  Sah'b 
for  one  of  his  own  clerks. 


195 


XIII 
ABOUT  RUG  BOOKS 

(BUT  TO   BE  SKIPPED   BY  THOSE  WHO  NEITHER  READ  NOR 
WRITE   THEM.) 

A  judge  at  common  law  may  be  an  ordinary  man;  a  good  judge 
of  a  carpet  must  be  a  genius. 

Edgar  Allan  Poe:  PHILOSOPHY  OF  FURNITURE 


WHENEVER  we  are  hard  up  for  amuse- 
ment— as    may    happen    even   in   royal 
Ecbatana,  since  Alexander  went  away — 
we  turn  over  our  rug  books.    Of  these 
we  have  quite  a  collection.     For  the  Sah'b  is  himself  a 
man  of  rugs;  and  when  a  new  book  about  them  appears, 
as  is  sure  to  happen  once  a  twelve-month,  the  good  people 
at  home  send  him  out  a  copy.     I  don't  think  he  ever 
bought  one  on  his  own  account — in  English.     But  they 


ABOUT  RUG  BOOKS 

help  to  console  him  for  the  fact  that  only  one  copy  in  three 
of  Life  or  Punch  reaches  us.  What  can  we  do?  Our 
destiny  has  given  us  to  know  from  our  youth  up  a  quantity 
of  simple  matters  which  to  this  day  remain  dark  to  most 
writers  of  rug  books.  And  man  must  laugh.  At  any  rate, 
I  must  confess  that  we  find  it  impossible  to  take  these 
volumes  very  seriously:  not  even  the  fattest  and  most 
expensive  of  them,  whose  authors'  names  are  pronounced 
in  whispers  by  all  ladies  in  America.  They  remind  us  too 
much  of  Babu  English,  and  of  what  Persians  say  about 
our  own  side  of  the  world. 

There  are,  of  course,  rug  books  and  rug  books.  It  is 
not  for  a  light-minded  nomad  to  mock  at  the  famous 
Austrian  folios,  at  Bode,  Martin,  or  Strzygowski,  or  even 
at  Mr.  J.  K.  Mumford.  Mr.  Mumford  is  by  no  means 
infallible.  But  his  limitations  have  been  those  of  oppor- 
tunity, rather  than  of  good  faith.  To  him  alone  is  due,  in 
our  country,  the  credit  of  having  made  some  sort  of  order 
out  of  a  picturesque  chaos.  He  inquired,  he  studied,  he 
travelled;  and  his  book  remains  the  most  informing  that 
has  hitherto  been  published  in  America.  If  he  pays  the 
penalty,  so  does  he  deserve  the  glory,  of  the  pioneer.  And 
I  hereby  offer  him  a  humble  tribute  of  respect  for  having 
blazed  out  a  way  which  many  followers  have  done  almost 
nothing  to  widen. 

Having  acquitted  one's  conscience  of  this  debt  of  honour 
one  is  bound  to  add  that  if  we  take  Mr.  Mumford  down, 
on  those  dark  days  when  Life  and  Punch  fail  to 
turn  up,  it  is  chiefly  for  certain  inessential  items  of  infor- 
mation which  he  lets  drop.  As  for  the  flock  of  which  he 
is  the  spiritual  father,  I  grant  that  they  generally  give  more 
practical  information,  wherever  they  got  it,  than  their 

197 


PERSIAN  MINIATURES 

cousins  oversea,  who  love  to  bring  forth  sumptuous  tomes 
more  enlightening  with  regard  to  the  myth  of  the  Golden 
Fleece  or  the  tomb  of  louiya  and  Touiyou  than  to  the 
knots  and  knottinesses  of  rugs.  But  it  is  hard  to  escape 
the  conviction  that  without  Mr.  Mumford  the  names  of 
few  of  these  ladies  and  gentlemen  would  ever  have  seen 
print.  What  enables  them  to  get  away  with  it,  as  the 
saying  so  expressively  goes,  is  the  great  popularity  of  Orien- 
tal rugs  in  our  country,  and  the  greater  ignorance  of  the 
countries  from  which  they  come.  These  authors  have,  of 
course,  their  own  regroupings  and  emendations.  But 
either  the  literature  to  which  they  contribute  is  a  new 
proof  of  an  old  saying  about  great  minds,  or  one  recognises 
again  and  again  Mr.  Mumford's  general  plan,  Mr.  Mum- 
ford's  facts,  Mr.  Mumford's  textile  tables,  and  Mr.  Mum- 
ford's  mistakes,  down  to  his  very  quotations  and  turns  of 
phrase.  Or  was  it  already  an  established  jargon  of  the 
trade  to  abound  in  "conceits/'  and  never  to  fail  to  say  of 
a  border  stripe  that  it  "carries"  such  and  such  a  design? 
At  all  events,  whenever  I  come  across  a  reference  to  Pro- 
fessor Goodyear,  to  Owen  Jones,  or  to  Sir  George  Birdwood 
— he  who  had  the  courage  to  write  at  the  top  of  a  learned 
sheaf  of  paper  "The  Termless  Antiquity  of  Integral 
Identity  of  the  Oriental  Manufacture  of  Sumptuary 
Carpets!" — I  can't  help  asking  myself  if  the  author  knows 
any  more  of  the  works  in  question  than  he  gleaned  from 
the  pages  of  Mr.  Mumford.  But  it  is  not  because  any 
of  them  ever  so  much  as  breathe  the  name  of  their  ghostly 
parent.  "For  fifteen  years,"  says  Mr.  Mumford  in  the 
preface  to  his  fourth  edition,  "I  have  persistently  'winked 
at  'Omer  down  the  road/  and  "Omer'  has  never  once 
'winked  back/" 

198 


ABOUT  RUG  BOOKS 


To  make  a  complete  catalogue  of  the  misinformation 
which  the  rug  fraternity  hand  on  from  one  to  another 
would  need  "a  painful  man  with  his  pen,  and  as  much 
patience  as  he  had,  who  wrote  the  Lives  and  Deaths  of 
the  Martyrs."  A  characteristic  if  mild  example  is  the 
name  Yuruk,*  applied  to  a  certain  class  of  Turkish  rugs 
and  translated  with  astonishing  unanimity  by  our  authors 
ties  as  meaning  mountaineer.  Whereas  the  real  word  is 
Yiiriik;  and  while  some  mountaineers  are  Yiiriiks,  all 
Yiirtiks  are  by  no  means  mountaineers.  For  the  name 
literally  signifies  a  man  who  walks :  i.  e.,  a  nomad.  A  more 
complicated  case  is  that  of  the  napless  carpets  known  in 
Persia  as  gilim  and  in  Turkey  as  kilim.  None  of  the  rug 
books  seem  to  be  aware  of  this  simple  fact,  and  their  spell- 
ings suffer  accordingly.  They  all  mention,  however,  a 
variety  which  they  call  kis  kilim.  I,  for  one,  have  never 
heard  of  it  outside  of  a  rug  book  or  a  rug  shop.  One 
reason,  perhaps,  is  that  there  is  no  such  word  in  Persian 
or  Turkish  as  kis.  Mr.  Mumford  explains  a  kis  kilim  as 
being  a  winter  covering,  thereby  leading  one  to  suspect 
that  his  informant  was  a  Smyrniote.  God  has  gifted  the 
Levantine  merchants  of  Polycarp's  city  with  eloquent  and 
with  ingenious  tongues,  but  not  with  tongues  that  are 
able  to  pronounce  the  Turkish  language.  Kish  kilimi 
should  be  the  true  term — if  it  actually  exits.  But  Mr. 
Mumford's  followers,  taking  a  little  further  counsel, 
inform  us  that  a  kis  kilim  is  a  girl  rug,  to  which  they  attach 
an  affecting  history  of  dowries  and  what  not.  And  they 


*For  the  spelling  followed  in  this  book,  see  the  last  two  paragraphs  of  the 
introduction. 

199 


PERSIAN  MINIATURES 

are  equally  wrong,  since  the  word  to  which  they  refer 
should  be  ki%,  with  a  vowel  sound  that  neither  a  Greek  nor 
an  American  can  pronounce.  You  pays  your  money  and 
you  takes  your  choice. 

Not  so  incorrect,  perhaps,  but  more  misleading,  is  a 
whole  family  of  words  which  our  authors  quote  in  classify- 
ing rugs  according  to  their  uses.  Thus  they  tell  us  that 
the  long  rugs  technically  known  as  runners  were  originally 
intended  for  divan  covers;  and  they  make  quite  a  story 
of  the  arrangement  of  an  Oriental  interior,  dragging  in 
the  classic  triclinium  and  fixing  the  places  of  greater  and 
of  lesser  honour  on  rugs  of  different  sorts.  I  have  no 
doubt  that  Mr.  Mumford  has  seen  Turkish  rooms  sur- 
rounded on  three  sides  by  divans,  and  divans  covered  with 
runners ;  but  I  doubt  very  much  whether  he  ever  saw  any- 
thing of  the  sort  in  Persia  or  other  parts  of  the  East  that 
are  farther  from  Western  influences.  Nor  can  the  allu- 
sion to  the  triclinium  be  otherwise  than  imaginative  when 
the  habit  of  the  Near  East  is  to  eat  on  the  floor,  squatting 
about  little  round  tables  six  or  eight  inches  high.  The  real 
origin  of  the  runner  was  probably  in  the  tradition  of  the 
tent.  In  Persia  particularly  sets  of  rugs  are  quite  com- 
mon, of  the  same  pattern  and  colour,  consisting  of  one 
large  carpet,  of  one  runner  as  long  as  that  carpet  is  wide, 
and  of  two  more  runners  whose  length  is  equal  either  to 
that  of  the  carpet  or  to  that  of  the  carpet  plus  the  width 
of  the  first  runner.  Such  a  set  is  called,  like  a  team  of 
horses,  a  dastel,  literally  a  handful;  and  its  purpose  is  for 
furnishing  tents  or  rooms  of  different  sizes  with  the  same 
rugs,  piecing  out  the  carpet  when  necessary  with  the  ac- 
companying runners.  Mr.  Mumford's  name  for  those 
runners,  makatlik,  has  justly  been  discarded  by  his  suc- 

200 


ABOUT  RUG  BOOKS 

cessors,  who  give  them  their  true  name  of  kenari.  Ma- 
katUk,  as  the  word  should  be,  may  roughly  be  translated 
as  sofa  covering,  and  kenari  as  bordering — from  kenar, 
edge,  which  is  common  to  Persian  and  Turkish  alike. 

As  for  the  so-called  odjalik  or  odjaklik,  which  I  would 
correct  and  simplify  as  ojaklik,  many  descant  on  its  place 
in  Oriental  hospitality,  though  no  one  attempts  to  fix  its 
place  with  relation  to  those  doubtful  divans.  It  means, 
if  you  insist,  a  hearth  rug.  But  I  question  if  many  of 
them  can  have  been  made  for  that  purpose,  for  the  simple 
reason  that  nothing  is  rarer  in  an  Oriental  house  than  a 
hearth.  The  cooking  is  done  when  possible  outside,  in 
the  open  or  in  a  detached  kitchen,  while  for  heating,  fire- 
places are  much  less  popular  than  a  device  which  I  have 
already  mentioned,  called  in  Persian  a  kursi.  If  a  rug 
were  used  in  connection  with  it,  the  last  thing  a  guest 
would  be  invited  to  do  would  be  to  take  his  place  thereon. 
At  night,  however,  he  would  be  given  such  a  rug  to  sleep 
on,  and  perhaps  another  for  a  quilt.  So  most  of  your 
hearth  rugs,  good  people,  are  nothing  more  or  less  than  beds. 

The  various  other  words  ending  in  lik  which  Mr.  Mum- 
ford  was  the  first  to  introduce  are  not  much  more  trust- 
worthy. In  the  first  place,  they  are  all  taken  from  the 
Ottoman  Turkish  language,  and  therefore  do  not  apply 
to  weaves  from  other  countries.  In  the  second  place, 
that  lik  must  be  accepted  with  discretion,  being  a  suffix 
something  like  our  own  suffix  -ing.  Hehbelik,  for  in- 
stance, must  be  accepted  with  double  discretion  because 
it  should  be  leilelik  and  because  heibeb  alone  means 
saddle  bag — leibelik  meaning,  among  other  things,  the 
material  out  of  which  saddle  bags  are  made.  And,  in  the 
third  place,  the  vowel  sound  of  that  suffix  undergoes  varia- 

20 1 


PERSIAN  MINIATURES 

tions  which  this  is  not  the  place  to  explain  but  which  the 
rug  books  never  indicate.  Misleading  in  another  way  is 
the  so-called  bammamlik,  or  bath  rug;  for  while  rugs  may 
be  found  in  the  dressing  rooms  of  baths,  they  are  never  of 
any  one  class,  nor  are  they  ever  used,  as  the  rug  books 
affirm,  in  any  part  of  a  Turkish  bath,  at  any  rate,  where  they 
come  in  contact  with  soap  and  water.  Still  more  mislead- 
ing, however,  is  the  term  turbeblik.  It  does  not  mean  a 
grave  rug,  nor  do  the  people  of  the  Near  East  leave  rugs  in 
cemeteries.  What  they  very  frequently  do  is  to  leave  rugs 
as  votive  offerings  in  mausoleums,  which  are  much  com- 
moner than  with  us  and  which  go  in  Turkish  by  the  name 
of  tiirbeb.  Thus  the  so-called  grave  rug  is  really  identical 
with  the  so-called  Mecca  rug,  which  is  often  a  prayer 
rug  but  which  the  more  discerning  of  our  authors  recog- 
nise as  forming  no  distinct  species. 

The  most  serious  of  this  family  of  errors  is  the  one  re- 
lating to  the  word  sedjadeb — or  sejjadeb,  as  I  would  prefer 
to  spell  it.  Mr.  Mumford's  disciples  have  improved  upon 
him  in  certain  minor  details,  but  no  one  of  them  has  ever 
yet  discovered  that  a  sejjadeb  and  what  they  unidiomatic- 
ally  term  a  namafok  are  both  one  and  the  same — namely, 
a  prayer  rug.  This  is  a  case  where  a  little  knowledge  of 
Oriental  languages  is  good  for  writing  about  matters 
Oriental.  For  sejjadeb  is  derived  from  the  Arabic  root 
meaning  worship,  and  by  no  means  signifies  a  carpet  of 
medium  size.  It  may,  however,  be  a  carpet  of  medium 
size,  or  of  the  largest  possible  size.  Many  Turkish  mos- 
ques contain  huge  Ushak  carpets  whose  design  consists  of 
a  multitude  of  pointed  panels.  Such  a  carpet  is  as  much 
a  sejjadeb  as  a  small  rug  of  one  panel.  But  to  say  of  the 
latter  that  every  Mohammedan  carries  one  around  with 

202 


ABOUT  RUG  BOOKS 

him,  or  so  much  as  owns  one,  is  absurd.  If  that  were 
true,  prayer  rugs  would  be  commoner  than  any  other  kind 
of  a  rug.  Which  is  far  from  being  the  case. 

Of  all  the  gibberish  that  has  been  written  on  this  sub- 
ject, it  would  be  hard  to  find  more  crowded  into  one  page 
than  may  be  read  in  Dr.  G.  G.  Lewis's  "Practical  Book  of 
Oriental  Rugs"  (2d  ed.,  p.  321).  After  the  usual  remark 
about  every  Mohammedan  possessing  his  own  prayer  rug, 
the  author  goes  on  to  say:  "  By  means  of  a  small  compass 
he  spreads  his  rug  so  that  the  mihrab  or  niche  points 
toward  Mecca,  where  Mohammed's  body  lies.  Then 
after  removing  all  money  and  jewellery  from  his  person, 
in  order  to  appear  before  God  in  the  most  abject  humility, 
he  combs  his  beard,  produces  a  rosary  of  ninety-nine 
beads  and  a  dried  cake  of  earth  which  came  from  Mecca. 
These  he  places  just  under  the  niche  and  then,  resting  his 
head  on  the  earth  with  his  hands  outstretched  on  either 
side,  he  performs  his  devotions.  The  mihrab  or  niche 
on  which  the  worshipper  places  his  head  represents  the 
door  of  a  mosque  and  reminds  those  who  use  it  of  the 
sacred  mosque  at  Mecca."  And  elsewhere  Dr.  Lewis 
propounds  the  alternative  theory  that  the  mihrab  "is 
supposed  to  imitate  the  form  of  the  Mihrab  in  the  temple 
at  Mecca"  (p.  121),  and  that  the  so-called  comb  designed 
on  some  Turkish  prayer  rugs  is  "an  emblem  of  the  Moham- 
medan faith  to  remind  the  devout  that  cleanliness  is  next 
to  godliness"  (p.  108). 

Now  hardly  one  of  these  statements  is  true.  Com- 
passes are  sometimes  carried  by  pilgrims  and  travellers, 
but  so  rarely  that  the  different  directions  in  which  they 
pray  is  one  of  the  stock  matters  of  pleasantry  among 
Mohammedans.  Far  rarer  is  that  precious  cake  of  dried 

203 


PERSIAN  MINIATURES 

earth  from  Mecca;  and  the  preparations  for  prayer  have 
more  to  do  with  running  water  than  with  a  comb,  which 
most  decidedly  is  not  an  emblem  of  the  Mohammedan 
faith.  Neither  are  you  ever  likely  to  see  a  rosary  of 
ninety-nine  beads — though  you  might  see  one  of  sixty-six 
beads.  The  common  number  is  thirty-three.  But  the 
rosary  plays  no  part  in  the  rite  of  the  prayer  rug;  and  when 
used  its  place  is  in  the  owner's  hand,  which  at  no  moment 
of  his  devotions  does  he  stretch  out  from  his  side.  Nor 
does  he  remove  money  and  jewellery  from  his  person,  un- 
less they  happen  to  be  gold  and  he  happens  to  be  extremely 
orthodox.  That  is  why  so  many  fine  Oriental  stones  are 
set  in  silver.  As  for  the  procedure  of  prayer,  the  devotee 
first  stands,  then  drops  to  his  knees,  and  finally  prostrates 
himself,  repeating  these  three  positions  a  different  number 
of  times  according  to  circumstances.  And  the  pointed 
panel  of  the  prayer  rug  neither  represents  the  door  of  a 
mosque  nor  the  mihrab  of  the  temple  at  Mecca.  The 
temple  at  Mecca  contains  no  mihrdb,  being  itself  the  centre 
of  the  axes  of  the  Mohammedan  world.  Moreover,  Mo- 
hammed, as  it  happens,  is  buried  in  Medina.  What  the 
panel  of  a  prayer  rug  represents,  if  anything,  is  the  mibrab 
of  an  ordinary  mosque — a  niche  roughly  corresponding  to 
the  altar  of  a  church;  and  the  finest  of  single-panelled 
rugs  were  made  to  put  into  such  a  niche.  Most  devotees 
content  themselves  with  any  kind  of  carpet  or  matting  to 
pray  on — or  even  their  own  coats,  if  other  conveniences  lack. 
Do  you  wonder,  then,  that  rug  books  are  capable  of 
affording  us  a  kind  of  pleasure  that  their  authors  never 
intended?  On  the  whole,  I  think  Dr.  Lewis  is  our  favour- 
ite. He  is  also  the  favourite  of  those  who  buy  rug  books, 
if  one  may  judge  from  the  fact  that  he  went  in  two  years 

204 


ABOUT  RUG  BOOKS 

into  two  editions.  And  his  book  would  have  deserved  its 
title  if  he  had  only  taken  the  trouble  to  make  it  accurate 
and  consistent.  As  it  is,  how  can  we  keep  straight  faces 
when  he  talks  about  Greek  Mohammedans  (p.  222),  or 
reveals  to  us  that  a  talismanic  triangle  is  of  ten  tattooed  on  a 
Turk's  body  (p.  1 37),  or  says  that  green  is  a  favourite  colour 
of  Persian  rug  makers  (p.  79),  or  announces  that  a  dog  is 
considered  in  the  Near  East  a  sacred  animal  (p.  no),  or 
emits  such  samples  of  Turkish  as  she  is  spoke  as  ubrecb 
and  sechmdisih — for  ibrik  (pitcher)  and  siclan  disbi  (rat's 
or  mouse's  tooth)?  The  pearl  of  this  collection,  however, 
is  his  statement  that  lule,  or  luleh,  of  all  words  the  most 
mystifying  to  his  brothers  of  the  craft,  is  "a  corruption  of 
the  Persian  word  'roulez/  meaning  ' jewel' "  (p.  349;  cf. 
163).  Some  Armenian  rug  dealer  must  have  stuck  a 
fluent  tongue  in  a  capacious  cheek  when  he  achieved  that 
etymology — for  I  would  gladly  entertain  the  hypothesis 
that  it  did  not  burst  from  the  brain  of  Dr.  Lewis.  So  far 
as  I  am  able  to  learn,  there  is  no  word  in  Persian  which 
remotely  resembles  roule%.  There  is  a  word  lulu,  which 
is  a  less  common  word  for  pearl;  and  in  another  place  Dr. 
Lewis  provides  the  form  routes  with  that  meaning.  But 
luleh  is  no  corruption  of  it — nor,  as  Mr.  Mumford  avers, 
of  the  French  roule^,  though  he  is  on  the  right  track. 
Luleh  is  a  word  which  both  in  Persian  and  in  Turkish 
means  pipe  or  tube.  And  it  is  applied  not  only  to  Bijar 
but  to  any  smallish  carpets  which  are  too  heavy  to  be 
folded  when  out  of  use,  and  are  therefore  rolled. 


On  matters  of  geography  and  spelling  I  am  willing  to 
touch  the  more  lightly,  knowing  how  far  the  East  is  from 

205 


PERSIAN  MINIATURES 

the  West  and  how  recalcitrant  the  English  alphabet  to 
render  its  own  sounds,  let  alone  those  of  other  languages. 
But  after  all  libraries  do  exist,  containing  fairly  reliable 
books  of  reference.  And  even  in  New  York  and  Philadel- 
phia, whence  emanate  most  of  these  instructive  works, 
there  dwell  orientalists  of  repute,  who  might  conceivably 
have  information  to  impart.  Yet  our  authors  seem  to 
prefer  to  consult,  if  not  one  another,  then  the  Armenian 
rug  dealer  around  the  corner,  or  haply  some  traveller  re- 
turned alive  from  what  they  invariably  term  "the  Orient." 
Thus  we  learn  from  Mr.  W.  D.  Ellwanger  of  the  most 
accessible  region  of  "the  Orient"  that  "most  of  the  rugs 
of  commerce  in  this  country  come  from  Persia,  Turkey, 
Asia  Minor,  Turkestan  .  .  .  "  ("The  Oriental  Rug," 
p.  1 3.)  Is  a  surprised  reader  wrong  in  drawing  the  infer- 
ence that  Turkey  and  Asia  Minor  are  supposed  to  have 
no  connection  with  each  other?  Of  the  latter  Dr.  Lewis 
informs  us  that  it  is  bounded  "on  the  south  by  Arabia, 
the  Mediterranean  and  Red  Seas"  (p.  342).  And  Ana- 
tolia is  usually  spoken  of  as  if  it  existed  in  some  fourth 
dimension  entirely  outside  the  peninsula  in  question. 
Whereas  the  name  is  merely  the  Greek  one  for  Asia  Minor 
— from  which  the  Turks  derive  their  Anadol. 

It  is  perhaps  not  unnatural  that  the  rug-geographer 
becomes  more  involved  in  obscurity  as  he  penetrates 
farther  into  "the  Orient."  Kurdistan,  for  instance,  is 
to  him  a  constant  stumbling  block — as  indeed  it  is  to 
most  westerners,  who  do  not  readily  take  in  the  conception 
of  that  Asiatic  Poland,  with  its  loosely  related,  semi- 
independent  tribes  living  partly  under  Persian  and  partly 
under  Turkish  suzerainty,  and  producing  within  a  few 
miles  of  each  other  such  totally  different  weaves  as  the 

206 


ABOUT  RUG  BOOKS 

Bijar  and  the  "Sehna."  So  does  Dr.  Lewis  find  it  in  him 
to  say  that  "the  southern  part  of  Armenia  is  called 
Kurdistan"  (p.  218).  Of  Persia  proper  I  have  read  as- 
tounding things,  of  which  not  the  least  astounding  is  that 
no  one  but  Mr.  Mumford  seems  to  recognise  Iran  as  the 
name  by  which  the  Persians  at  this  moment  designate  their 
own  country.  Whence  will  appear  the  true  beauty  of 
giving  that  name,  as  dealers  and  rug  books  love  to  do, 
to  a  certain  class  of  rugs  from  the  province  of  Irak  Ajemi. 
And  even  Mr.  Mumford  opens  the  preface  of  his  fourth 
edition  with  the  strange  information  that  "the  past 
decade  has  witnessed  in  Persia  the  downfall  of  a  dynasty, 
and  indeed  of  the  throne  itself.  The  oldest  of  empires 
has  been  for  a  space  the  newest  of  republics.  .  .  " 
While  elsewhere  (p.  165)  he  says  "that  the  Persian  of 
to-day  is  a  transplanted  Turk,  that  the  language  used 
over  the  greater  part  of  the  empire  is  a  peculiar  form  of 
Turkish,  and  that  the  pure  Persian,  the  Iranian,  is  a  rara 
avis  in  the  land  whose  name  he  bears."  The  pure  Persian 
is  no  doubt  as  rare  a  bird  as  the  pure  Italian,  say,  or  the 
pure  Christian.  But  while  the  reigning  dynasty  is  of  Turko- 
man origin,  and  while  a  Turkish  dialect  is  spoken  in 
Azerbaijan  and — to  a  lesser  extent — in  the  neighbourhood 
of  Hamadan,  the  vast  majority  of  Persians  neither  under- 
stand it  nor  are  transplanted  Turks.  Mr.  Mumford's 
mistakes,  however,  usually  lie  in  a  too  broad  application 
of  a  particular  fact.  He  would  be  incapable  of  announc- 
ing like  Dr.  Lewis,  and  of  twice  repeating,  that  Laristan 
and  Luristan  are  identical  (pp.  202,  349,  350). 

As  for  Turkestan  and  the  Caucasus,  they  might  as 
well  be  Mars  and  the  moon.  I  cannot  deny  that  the 
Caucasus  is  politically  a  part  of  Russia — though  I  would 

207 


PERSIAN  MINIATURES 

not  stake  my  head  on  the  certainty  of  its  so  remaining  to 
the  end  of  time.  But  no  Russian  ever  made  a  rug,  or 
least  of  all  a  Yiirtik  rug,  as  Mr.  Ellwanger  seems  to  inti- 
mate (p.  63).  Nor,  as  the  rug  books  inform  us  with 
wonderful  unanimity,  is  Kazak  a  corruption  of  Cossack, 
the  case  being  exactly  the  contrary.  And  if  the  Caucasus 
be  Russia,  so  are  the  trans-Caspian  provinces.  To  call 
them  so,  at  any  rate,  would  save  the  rug-scriveners  from 
the  No  Man's  Land  they  make  of  that  vast  and  little- 
visited  region.  You  would  think,  to  read  their  classifica- 
tions, that  east  of  the  Caspian  one  name  is  good  as  an- 
other, and  that  it  is  all  the  same  whether  you  say  Bokhara, 
Merv,  Khiva,  Samarkand,  or  Turkestan. 

In  the  finer  points  of  orthography  the  rug  book  people 
are  not  wholly  to  blame  for  the  fantastic  things  they  do. 
Englishmen  and  Americans  have  always  been  notorious 
for  the  liberties  they  take  with  foreign  names.  But  there 
is  more  than  a  suspicion  of  unscholarliness  in  the  unsys- 
tematic spelling  of  these  books,  their  general  failure  to 
give  a  key  to  their  own  pronunciation,  and  the  importance 
they  attribute  to  variant  forms.  Dr.  Lewis  perhaps  ex- 
presses their  general  state  of  mind  when  he  confides  to  us 
(p.  341,  note)  that  "in  the  Turkish  and  Persian  languages 
the  vowels  are  frequently  silent  and  the  characters  do 
not  stand  for  single  consonants,  but  represent  combina- 
tions of  sounds  as  in  short-hand,  so  that  the  same  word 
is  spelled  in  a  great  variety  of  ways  when  it  is  translated 
into  English  ..."  Mark  that  "translated "!  It  is 
true  that  the  Arabic  alphabet  is  short  of  vowels,  and  that 
the  different  races  who  use  it  twist  it  as  variously  as  do 
the  people  of  Europe  the  long-suffering  Roman  alphabet. 
But  neither  in  Persian  nor  in  Turkish  are  there  short-hand 

208 


ABOUT  RUG  BOOKS 

combinations  of  consonants — unless  the  same  thing  may 
be  said  of  Greek  and  Russian,  which  are  richer  than 
English  in  having  single  letters  to  represent  such  sounds 
as  ih  or  si.  The  bottom  of  the  matter  is  that  neither 
Dr.  Lewis  nor  any  one  else  will  take  the  trouble  to  find 
out  how  a  name  is  pronounced  in  its  own  country,  and  to 
choose  a  consistent  method  of  rendering  that  name  in 
English.  Thus  it  is  that  the  author  of  "The  Practical 
Book  of  Oriental  Rugs"  encumbers  his  pages  with  a 
quantity  of  so  called  synonyms,  which  are  nothing  but 
variant — and  usually  very  incorrect — spellings  he  has 
chanced  to  pick  up.  A  case  in  point  is  the  town  of  Elisa- 
vetpol,  in  the  Transcaucasus,  whose  older  name  of  Ganja 
or  Genjeh  has  caused  fountains  of  ink  to  flow.  Dr.  Lewis 
calls  the  rugs  of  this  district  Genghis,  which  he  directs  us 
to  pronounce  Jen'-gis,  giving  as  "synonyms"  Guenja, 
Guendja,  and  Guen jes.  He  goes  on  to  state  that  "  author- 
ities differ  greatly  as  to  the  origin  of  the  name.  Some  say 
that  the  proper  name  should  be  Guenja,  which  was  the 
ancient  name  of  Elizabethpol,  from  whence  they  came. 
Others  insist  that  they  should  be  called  Genghis,  which 
is  the  name  of  the  tribe  of  Nomads  living  in  the  vicinity 
of  Elizabethpol  who  weave  them"  (p.  267).  If  Dr.  Lewis 
had  thought  fit  to  consult  other  authorities  than  his  pred- 
ecessors in  the  American  literature  of  rugs,  one  or  two 
of  whom  relate  "Genghis"  to  the  conqueror  Chingiz  Khan, 
he  would  very  easily  have  found  out  that  Ganja  is  a 
perfectly  well-known  town,  founded  by  Kobad  I,  Sasanian 
king  of  Persia,  in  the  fifth  or  sixth  century  of  our  era, 
and  famous  as  the  birthplace  of  the  Persian  poet  Nizami, 
who  wrote  the  epics  of  "Khosrev  and  Shirin"  and  "Majnun 
and  Leila".  He  would  also  have  found  out  that  the  elusive 

209 


PERSIAN  MINIATURES 

vowel  sounds  of  that  Persian  name — which  is  used  to  this 
day  by  thousands  of  Caucasians — vary  between  a  and  et 
and  that  a  final  i  is  a  Persian  and  Azeri  Turkish  suffix  of 
origin,  equivalent  to  the  Ottoman  Turkish  li — by  which 
Mr.  Mumford  not  too  correctly  designates  a  man  of 
Hamadan.  A  man  or  a  thing  from  Hamadan  is  locally 
termed  Hamadani.  And  so,  by  a  perfectly  comprehensi- 
ble contraction,  Ganji  or  Genji.  Which,  about  as  nearly, 
as  can  be  arrived  at  in  English,  is  the  correct  form. 

Of  Hamadan  itself  Dr.  Lewis  gives  the  baroque  "syno- 
nyms" Hamadie  and  Hamidieh.  Where  in  the  world 
he  fished  up  Hamadie  I  can't  imagine;  but  Hamidieh  is  a 
Turkish  adjective  made  out  of  the  name  Hamid,  having 
no  more  to  do  with  Hamadan  then  our  own  adjective 
Augustan.  Diverting  as  his  "synonyms"  are,  however,  it 
is  when  we  come  to  the  glossary  at  the  end  of  his  book  that 

the  rafters  of  Ecbatana Well,  they  can  hardly  ring, 

because  they  are  neatly  encased  in  mud.  And  how  should 
the  rug  book  people  know  any  better,  poor  dears?  Yet 
why  should  they  voluntarily,  and  with  so  little  pains  at 
verification  or  proof-reading,  throw  themselves  to  the 
lions?  One  reason  is  that  it  is  easier  for  a  camel  to  pass 
through  the  eye  of  a  needle  than  for  an  Anglo-Saxon  to 
get  it  into  his  head  that  the  b  in  Bokhara  and  Daghestan 
means  something,  and  that  practically  every  word  in  his 
Oriental  vocabulary  must  be  accented  on  the  last  syllable. 
To  do  so,  at  all  events,  would  save  him  from  such  horrors 
as  Af-ghan'-is-tan,  An-go'-ra,  or  Fer'-a-ghan.  Of  the  last 
I  am  happy  to  recognise  that  Dr.  Lewis  does  not  direct  us 
to  sound  the  g.  And,  after  all,  it  is  useless  to  attempt  to 
reform  the  Anglo-Saxon  world  in  the  matter  of  pronounc- 
ing those  two  gutturals  gl  and  kh.  They  are  disagreeable 

210 


ABOUT  RUG  BOOKS 

sounds,  and  one  must  use  disagreeable  terms  in  describing 
them.  The  first  is  the  noise  you  make  in  your  throat 
when  you  gargle,  while  the  second  is  the  worse  noise  you 
make  when  you  have  a  cold  and  set  about  clearing  your 
throat — if  you  are  ever  so  impolite  as  to  hawk.  But  it 
will  do  you  no  harm  to  remember  that  those  sounds  are 
perfectly  distinct  from  a  simple  g  or  kt  and  that  letters 
exist  to  express  them  in  the  eastern  as  in  some  western 
languages. 


All  this,  of  course,  has  little  to  do  with  the  serious  part  of 
rug  books,  which  is  the  description  and  classification  of 
rugs.  And  even  if  we  in  Ecbatana  can't  help  an  occasional 
chuckle,  we  know  it  isn't  fair  to  chuckle  too  loudly  about 
people  who  haven't  been  as  lucky  as  we.  One  expert, 
however,  authoress  of  "Rugs  in  Their  Native  Land," 
confesses  that  "a  residence  of  many  years  in  Turkey, 
part  of  the  time  in  the  far  interior,  offered  ample  oppor- 
tunity to  continue  the  study  of  Oriental  rugs  begun  in 
America."  And  elsewhere  she  alludes  to  her  familiarity 
with  the  language  of  the  country  (p.  130).  I  do  not  like 
to  seem  rude  to  a  lady;  but  I  could  hardly  help  asking 
myself  which  of  the  various  languages  of  the  country  this 
lady  meant  when  I  saw  how  she  spelled  names,  and  when 
1  read  that  khatchli,  alias  katchli  and  lardjlie,  used  in 
describing  the  so-called  Princess  Bokharas,  is  the  Armenian 
name  for  cross.  The  Armenian  name  for  a  cross  is  klacl, 
which  might  better  be  simplified  for  Anglo-Saxon  readers 
as  loach.  The  Turks,  lacking  such  a  word  of  their  own, 
borrow  it  from  the  Armenians — to  say  nothing  here  of 
the  Greeks — and  on  occasion  add  their  own  suffix  of  origin, 

211 


PERSIAN  MINIATURES 

description,  or  possession,  li.  Hacltt,  therefore,  is  a 
Turkish  form,  meaning  crossed,  or  having  a  cross. 

Truth  further  obliges  me  to  confide  in  the  reader  that  I 
fail  to  find  any  particular  evidence  of  Miss  or  Mrs.  Dunn 
having  availed  herself  of  the  ample  opportunity  she  men- 
tions. She  misses  her  chance  of  writing  something  really 
first-hand  and  personal  about  rugs,  even  in  that  limited 
part  of  their  native  land  with  which  she  is  acquainted, 
and  she  repeats  many  of  the  stock  misnomers  which  the 
rug  books  bid  fair  to  make  permanent.  Thus  she  classes 
the  Mosul — Musul,  I  am  told,  is  the  local  pronunciation— 
among  Turkish  products,  and  states  that  more  rugs  are 
made  in  and  shipped  from  that  district  than  from  any 
other  except  Smyrna  (pp.  86,  100).  As  a  matter  of  fact, 
comparatively  few  rugs  are  made  in  the  neighbourhood 
of  Mosul,  and  practically  none  are  now  shipped  from 
there — or  were  before  the  war.  The  sole  connection  that 
a  Mosul  rug  has  with  Mosul  is  that  a  certain  class  of  small 
Kurdish  rugs  were  once  collected  in  that  city  by  Jewish 
dealers,  on  behalf  of  their  principals  in  Baghdad.  Since 
1900  this  trade  has  passed  to  the  other  side  of  the  moun- 
tains, and  Hamadan  is  now  the  market  for  "Mosuls." 
They  are  small,  loosely  woven,  high-piled  rugs  of  the  poorer 
qualities,  partly  from  Turkish,  oftener  from  Persian  Kur- 
distan, and  from  the  region  around  Hamadan  extending 
even  as  far  south  as  Malay ir. 

There  are  other  things  about  the  obscure  subject  of 
Kurdistan  that  a  lady  who  has  lived  in  the  far  interior  of 
Turkey  might  have  told  us.  But  she  leaves  us  to  gather 
what  is  far  from  the  fact — that  the  inhabitants  are  all  of 
the  one  Dersim  tribe  she  mentions  (p.  102).  And  she 
lets  slip  a  brilliant  opportunity  to  tell  her  fellow  connois- 

212 


ABOUT  RUG  BOOKS 

seurs  what  none  of  them  except  Mr.  Mumford  seems  to 
suspect,  that  the  town  they  oftenest  name  "Sehna"  is 
purely  Kurdish,  being — as  Sauj  Bulagh  used  to  be — the 
capital  of  Persian  Kurdistan,  and  that  "Sehna"  rugs  are 
Kurdish  and  not  Persian.  With  regard  to  her  travels  in 
remoter  regions  of  "the  Orient"  our  authoress  maintains  a 
discreet  reticence.  But  we  can  hardly  assume  that  they 
included  Persia  when  she  makes  a  distinction  between 
"Kirmansha"  and  Kermanshah,  and  asserts  of  carpets 
bearing  the  latter  name  that  they  are  made  in  Tabriz. 
I  hasten  to  add,  however,  that  she  is  by  no  means  alone  in 
this  astonishing  belief.  Mr.  Mumford  was  the  first  to  give 
voice  to  it,  and  it  has  been  followed  more  or  less  faithfully 
by  every  one  of  his  successors  whom  I  have  consulted 
except  Mary  Beach  Langton,  in  her  little  book  on  "  How 
to  Know  Oriental  Rugs"  (p.  78).  I  might  add  in  passing 
that  the  serious  student  will  hardly  learn  from  Mrs. 
Langton  how  to  know  Oriental  rugs,  but  that  she  shows 
other  evidences  of  having  gone  outside  the  pages  of  her 
colleagues  for  her  information.  The  truth  is  that  Ker- 
mans,  Kirmans,  "  Kirmanshas,"  and  "  Kermanshahs "  are 
all  one  and  the  same.  They  have  nothing  whatever  to  do 
with  either  Kermanshah  or  Tabriz,  except  that  the  modern 
industry  in  Tabriz  was  started  by  weavers  from  Kerman, 
who  imported  their  own  designs  and  methods  of  work. 
The  Tabrizis,  in  turn,  have  influenced  the  modern  output 
of  Meshed.  As  for  Kermanshah,  which  does  happen  to 
be  an  important  wool  and  trading  centre,  it  is  hardly  an 
exaggeration  to  affirm  that  no  rugs  are  or  ever  were  made 
there.  What  the  Satrap  told  us  to  the  contrary  was  either 
the  exception  that  proves  the  rule  or  a  quotation  from  his 
reminiscences  of  another  province.  The  name  grew  out  of 

213 


PERSIAN  MINIATURES 

the  ignorance  or  perverted  ingenuity  of  dealers,  who 
knew  nothing  about  so  remote  a  town  as  Kerman,  who  were 
confused  by  its  similarity  to  the  name  of  Kermanshah,  and 
whose  romantic  eyes  were  attracted  by  the  termination  of 
the  latter.  A  "  Kermanshah"  is  merely  a  better  example 
of  a  modern  Kerman.  And  when  the  rug  is  unusually 
big,  and  the  dealer  wishes  to  be  unusually  impressive, 
he  pronounces  it,  out  of  the  magniloquence  of  his  own 
exuberant  heart,  a  "royal  Kermanshah."  A  precisely 
similar  case  is  that  of  the  so-called  royal  or  princess 
"Bokharas" — which,  as  it  happens,  do  not  come  from 
Bokhara. 

Eliza  Dunn  makes  a  less  pardonable  confusion,  and  one 
that  I  do  not  recollect  having  encountered  elsewhere, 
when  she  speaks  of  "Meshed  or  Muskabad"  (pp.  103, 
117).  Meshed  and  Muskabad,  or  Mushkabad,  are,  in 
Persia,  very  nearly  as  far  as  the  East  is  from  the  West. 
For  Meshed  is  Meshed,  while  Mushkabad  is  Sultanabad 
— of  the  better  classes.  Mushkabad  was  the  name  of  a 
town  between  Kum  and  Sultanabad  which  the  long- 
bearded  Fat'h  Ali  Shah  destroyed  about  a  hundred  years 
ago,  and  Sultanabad  is  its  modern  successor.  Eliza  Dunn 
might  be  surprised  to  hear  that  most  modern  Saruks  are 
woven  in  the  latter  place,  as  I  always  am  in  museums 
to  find  a  certain  kind  of  mediaeval  pottery  labelled  Sultan- 
abad. 

I  am  delighted  to  give  this  lady  the  credit  of  recognising 
that  the  so-called  Bokhara  rugs  are  really  Turkoman. 
But  otherwise  she  does  nothing  to  dispel  the  haze  of 
ignorance  that  makes  possible  so  preposterous  a  misnomer 
as  "Khiva  Bokhara."  A  Khiva  Bokhara  means  just 
about  as  much  as  a  Boston  New  York  one,  and  it  is  time 

214 


ABOUT  RUG  BOOKS 

the  rug  people  had  the  courage  to  say  so.  Our  authoress 
runs  the  gauntlet  of  a  certain  proverb  about  a  little 
knowledge  when  she  asserts  that  the  Turkoman  "prayer 
rugs  are  called  Tekke  from  their  use  in  Tekkes  or  places  of 
worship"  (p.  132),  apparently  oblivious  to  the  fact  that 
there  are  in  Transcaspia  tribes  of  Akhal  Tekkeh,  Merv 
Tekkeh,  and  heaven  only  knows  how  many  other  kinds  of 
Tekkeh  Turkomans.  In  the  matter  of  Beluchistan,  again, 
she  veers  a  point  nearer  the  truth  than  most  of  her  fellow- 
scribes,  who  outdo  each  other  in  moving  descriptions  of 
the  hot  and  arid  homeland  of  Beluch  rugs.  I  do  not  pre- 
tend myself  to  know  anything  about  Beluchistan,  or 
whether  rugs  are  made  in  any  part  of  it.  I  do  know, 
however,  that  most  of  the  Beluch  rugs  of  commerce,  if  not 
all,  come  neither  from  Beluchistan  nor,  as  Eliza  Dunn 
states,  from  Kerman,  but  from  Khorasan.  They  are 
woven  by  nomad  Beluchis  who  pitch  their  black  tents  in 
the  lower  part  of  that  province.  The  two  chief  markets 
for  them  are  Birjand,  the  capital  of  that  region  and  an 
important  centre  of  rug  weaving,  and  Turbat-i-Haidari, 
some  ninety  miles  south  of  Meshed — not  to  be  confused 
with  another  Turbat  nearer  the  Afghan  border.  In  the 
Asiatic  trade  these  rugs  are  rightly  called  Beluch.  The 
other  two  syllables  are  added  by  logical-minded  westerners 
jumping  at  conclusions. 

ii 

I  have  already  intimated,  and  I  am  ready  to  repeat  in 
so  many  words,  that  it  is  possible  to  go  too  far  in  making 
merry  over  books  which  never  intended  to  say  the  last 
word  on  an  extremely  complicated  subject.  If  the  reader 
will  grant  me  that  it  is  one  of  the  first  impulses  of  man  to 

215 


PERSIAN  MINIATURES 

laugh  at  the  misnaming  of  things  and  places  familiar  to 
him,  I  will  grant  the  reader  that  it  is  something  for  an 
inhabitant  of  New  York  or  Philadelphia  to  have  found  out 
where  so  many  of  the  rugs  on  his  floor  came  from — and 
that  the  present  critic,  for  his  own  part,  knows  very  much 
less  about  it  than  the  most  unreliable  of  the  writers  he  criti- 
cises. I  will  also  grant  that  rugs  and  words  are  something 
alike  in  that  they  are  the  common  property  of  all  man- 
kind, and  not,  like  marbles  or  canvases  or  other  products 
of  the  more  aristocratic  arts,  the  guarded  possession  of  a 
chosen  few.  Consequently  the  bounds  between  art  and 
industry  in  these  two  forms  of  weaving  are  vaguer  than  in 
certain  other  departments  of  creative  activity.  And  the 
owner  of  ten  or  twenty-five  or  sixty  Asiatic  rugs  needs  less 
courage  to  make  a  book  about  them  than  the  possessor  of  a 
similar  number  of  old  Chinese  porcelains  or  Italian  paint- 
ings. Moreover,  there  is  not  yet,  as  indeed  more  than  one 
writer  of  rug  books  has  pointed  out,  an  authoritative 
literature  on  the  subject.  The  field  is  still  open  to  whom- 
ever will  take  it. 

But  it  will  never  be  taken  in  any  such  way  as  the  one 
hitherto  followed  by  American  writers.  It  is  no  flattering 
proof  of  what  we  know  of  the  East  and  its  arts,  or  of  the 
standards  of  criticism  accepted  among  us,  that  publishers 
can  go  on  issuing  these  more  or  less  expensive  picture 
books,  improvised  out  of  Mr.  Mumford  and  water. 
Whether  we  regard  rugs  as  works  of  art  or  as  household 
conveniences,  surely  they  deserve  a  study  no  less  special- 
ised than  etchings,  say,  or  textiles.  The  simplest  hand- 
book of  any  other  art  or  industry  presupposes  a  back- 
ground of  knowledge  entirely  foreign  to  these  books.  The 
fact  is  that  not  one  of  their  authors  possesses  the  equip- 

216 


ABOUT  RUG  BOOKS 

ment  to  write  a  satisfactory  rug  book.  If  I  include  Mr. 
Mumford  in  this  assertion,  I  must  repeat  that  he  deserves 
great  credit  for  his  pioneer  work  in  an  empty  field.  His 
followers,  however,  have  done  practically  nothing  to 
clarify  and  add  to  the  data  which  he  made  available  to 
them.  For  they  persist  in  following  a  method  by  which 
it  is  hopeless  to  arrive  at  any  solid  result. 

Their  method,  one  gathers  from  their  books,  is  to  sit 
down  with  Mr.  Mumford  in  one  hand  and  a  school  geog- 
raphy in  the  other,  dictating  until  they  feel  the  need  of 
illumination  on  some  obscure  point — when  they  seek 
enlightenment  from  an  Armenian  rug  pedlar  or  from  the 
buyer  of  a  department  store  who  has  been  three  times  to 
Smyrna,  Constantinople,  Tiflis,  and  Tabriz.  Their  con- 
ception of  "the  Orient,"  at  any  rate,  seems  not  to  differ 
very  materially  from  the  Persian  idea  of  Firengistan, 
which  for  the  common  run  of  Iranians  lumps  America 
with  Europe  and  presupposes  for  us  all  a  common  history 
and  language.  Otherwise  how  could  Mr.  Ellwanger,  for 
instance,  declare  that  Arabic  is  the  lingua  franca  of  the 
Near  East  (p.  122),  or  Dr.  Lewis  air  his  views  of  the  Arabic 
alphabet,  or  their  colleagues  one  and  all  trot  out  their 
"namailik,"  "behbelik"  etc.,  as  applicable  to  all  prayer 
rugs,  saddlebags,  and  so  forth?  They  are  not  to  blame  for 
not  knowing  Arabic  and  all  the  other  languages  and  dia- 
lects of  Asia.  But  they  are  scarcely  to  be  commended 
for  volunteering  information  about  matters  of  which  they 
know  little  or  nothing.  It  naturally  makes  one  distrust 
everything  they  have  to  say.  And  I,  for  one,  am  unable 
to  comprehend  their  childlike  faith  in  the  gentlemen  of 
the  trade. 

It  is  true  enough  that  our  knowledge  and  enjoyment  of 

217 


PERSIAN  MINIATURES 

Oriental  rugs  has  been  gained  chiefly  in  the  way  of  trade, 
and  that  dealers  were  long,  perhaps  still  are,  our  best 
authorities.  But  while  some  dealers  are  educated  men, 
and  have  enjoyed  wide  experience  in  centres  both  of  rug 
selling  and  rug  weaving,  they  do  not  appear  to  be  the  ones 
to  whom  the  rug  book  people  apply.  Is  it  necessary  to 
point  out  that  because  a  man  happens  to  buy  or  sell  rugs, 
and  knows  how  to  distinguish  many  varieties  of  them, 
or  even  to  speak  one  or  two  of  the  languages  of  their 
makers,  it  does  not  follow  that  he  is  infallible  with  regard 
to  every  phase  of  the  subject?  For  the  rest,  few  Armenian 
rug  dealers  in  America  ever  set  their  foot  in  any  centre  of 
rug  weaving,  or  ever  troubled  themselves  about  little 
matters  like  geography,  orthography,  philology,  or  eth- 
nology. Few  of  them,  either,  ever  in  their  lives  hesitated 
for  an  answer.  For  the  Oriental  point  of  view  is  that 
courtesy  requires  an  answer  to  a  question,  the  actual 
truth  of  the  reply  being  quite  a  secondary  matter.  Few 
American  buyers,  furthermore,  remain  in  the  countries 
they  visit  long  enough  to  acquire  much  first-hand  informa- 
tion. And  the  professional  rug  buyer  is  first  and  foremost 
a  business  man,  not  much  more  likely  than  his  Armenian 
colleague  to  ask  himself  or  any  one  else  questions  about 
the  broader  aspects  of  the  commerce  in  which  he  is  en- 
gaged. He  is,  I  like  to  think,  constitutionally  more  willing 
to  utter  the  simple  phrase  "  I  don't  know."  But  it  is  as 
easy  for  him  as  for  any  one  else  to  give  a  particular  fact 
a  general  application,  or  to  think  that  "  Iran"  and  "  Ker- 
manshah"  and  "  Khiva  Bokhara"  are  good  enough  names 
for  certain  recognised  kinds  of  rugs. 

I  have  perhaps  gone  too  far  about  to  intimate  what 
might  have  been  said  in  a  sentence:  that  the  writer  of  a 

218 


ABOUT  RUG  BOOKS 

satisfactory  rug  book  should  be  a  connoisseur  doubled 
by  an  Orientalist.  He  should  possess  exact  and  detailed 
knowledge  of  rugs,  their  manufacture,  the  places  they  come 
from.  He  should  know  something  about  the  languages 
of  those  places,  to  say  nothing  of  their  geography,  their 
history,  their  customs,  and  their  art.  And  he  should 
have  in  him  enough  of  a  critical  method  to  be  capable  of 
putting  his  material  into  workmanlike  form.  How  else 
can  he  avoid  such  pitfalls  as  I  have  already  pointed  out, 
or  hope  to  write  a  book  worthy  of  ranking  with  serious 
studies  of  other  arts?  For  this  art,  this  industry  if  you 
prefer,  is  too  complex  and  set  in  too  unfamiliar  a  back- 
ground to  be  adequately  treated  by  a  foreigner  without  a 
lifetime  of  research. 

Consider,  for  instance,  the  important  detail  of  classi- 
fication, which  justly  fills  so  large  a  part  of  every  rug  book. 
Most  of  our  authors  classify  carpets  on  geographical  lines, 
enumerating  the  different  countries  of  Asia  where  rugs  are 
woven  and  taking  some  account  of  the  different  provinces 
of  those  countries — especially  in  Persia.  But  they  also 
cling  to  trade  names,  based  on  however  false  a  geography. 
And  besides  taking  these  and  other  liberties  with  the  map, 
they  further  confuse  the  reader  by  jumping  from  their 
geographical  classification  to  other  systems  based  on 
similarities  of  weave  or  design.  Thus  most  of  them  make 
a  distinction  between  a  Meshed  rug  and  a  Khorasan — 
Meshed  being,  of  course,  the  chief  city  of  that  province 
— while  maintaining  a  mysterious  silence  with  regard  to 
other  weaves  of  Khorasan.  Mr.  Mumford,  again,  invents 
the  name  Kirmanieh,  under  which  he  includes  not  only 
Kerman  but  "  Khorasan/'  Meshed,  Herat,  and  Shiraz. 
And  Dr.  Lewis  transfers  Kashan  to  Azerbaijan,  further 

219 


PERSIAN  MINIATURES 

making  distinctions  between  Ardelan  and  Eastern  Kur- 
distan which  do  not  square  with  the  facts.  As  for  the 
great  north-central  Persian  province  of  Irak  Ajemi, 
originally  extending  from  the  Elburzrange  to  Isfahan,  it 
now  means  to  the  Persians  the  country  around  Sultana- 
bad,  the  Fera'han-Saruk-Serabend  country,  which  may  be 
stretched  to  include  Kum  and  Kashan.  This  compara- 
tively small  area  produces  more  rugs  than  any  other  in 
Persia,  and  it  is  by  no  means  inaccessible.  Yet  over  it 
reigns  in  the  rug  books  a  twilight  of  darkest  Africa.  How, 
then,  until  the  writers  of  the  books  know  what  they  are 
talking  about,  and  what  perhaps  no  one  in  the  American 
trade  is  competent  to  tell  them,  can  they  possibly  classify 
with  accuracy  or  perspective? 

The  problem,  I  admit,  is  far  from  simple.  But  it  will 
never  be  solved  in  a  New  York  library — or  even  in  the 
saloon  of  an  excursion  boat  on  the  Great  Lakes,  where,  I 
am  informed,  one  of  the  most  popular  of  our  authors,  while 
on  a  midsummer  holiday,  composed  his  magnum  opus. 
Dr.  Lewis  tells  us  that  there  are  over  fifty  varieties  of 
commercial  rugs  (p.  161).  If  he  had  said  five  hundred 
he  would  have  fallen  short  of  the  truth.  The  fact  is 
that  there  are  many  more  kinds  of  rugs  than  any  one 
seems  to  suspect.  Which  partly  accounts  for  such  absurd 
trade  names  as  "Iran"  and  "  Kermanshah."  Such  trade 
names  as  Mahal,  Mushkabad,  and  Savalan,  on  the  other 
hand,  are  more  legitimate,  having  been  invented  by  mod- 
ern manufacturers  to  designate  different  grades  of  their 
own  Sultanabads.  But  there  are  undreamt  of  subtleties 
even  behind  the  most  straightforward  name.  A  Hama- 
dan,  for  example,  is  universally  described  in  the  books  as 
having  a  camel  border,  or  a  camel  ground  diapered  in  a 

220 


ABOUT  RUG  BOOKS 

lighter  shade,  ornamented  with  what  our  authors  elegantly 
name  a  pole  medallion.  Whereas  the  majority  of  Hama- 
dans  are  of  quite  other  types.  And  until  1912,  or  there- 
abouts, not  one  of  them  came  from  the  town  of  Hamadan. 
The  plain  sbotori  (camel-coloured)  Hamadan  is  made  in 
the  adjoining  district  of  Mehraban,  while  the  diapered  or 
sbireb-shekeri  (syrupy!)  is  from  a  place  called  Dargezin. 
Others  are  from  Borchalu,  Erzamfud,  Famenin,  Injelas, 
Kabutraheng,  etc. — all  as  truly  Hamadans  as  the  camel 
rugs,  because  they  are  woven  in  the  region  of  Hamadan 
and  marketed  here,  yet  each  distinctly  recognisable  to  the 
expert  by  its  own  local  characteristics.  And  every  other 
rug  centre  has  similar  local  subdivisions,  the  vast  majority 
of  which  remain  unknown  to  the  books. 

A  primary  essential,  then,  of  a  satisfactory  rug  book  is 
that  it  should  include  reliable  maps.  In  this  respect  the 
existing  books  are  woefully  deficient.  Few  of  them  con- 
tain even  approximately  accurate  plans  of  any  Asiatic 
country,  while  none  of  them  show  the  whereabouts  of  all 
the  places  they  mention.  Much  less  do  any  of  them  give 
detailed  charts  of  the  principal  centres  of  weaving.  This 
is  the  less  excusable  because  the  whole  background  of  this 
art  whose  masterpieces  bear  the  names  of  tribes,  provinces, 
and  cities  is  geography.  Only  on  geographical  lines  can 
any  clear  idea  be  gained  of  the  different  schools  of  rugs, 
or  any  foundation  be  laid  for  their  history  and  an  under- 
standing of  their  mutual  relations.  But  it  is  not  enough 
to  follow  a  contemporary  atlas,  however  exact — as  these 
are  at  times  to  teach  us.  For  no  contemporary  atlas  can 
show  how  boundaries  have  shifted  even  in  the  lifetime  of 
existing  rugs.  This  is  particularly  true  of  a  country  like 
Persia,  whose  interior  provinces  and  exterior  frontiers 

221 


PERSIAN  MINIATURES 

have  varied  enormously  throughout  the  long  period  during 
which  weavers  have  sat  at  looms.  And  small  matters  like 
colour  and  design  are  often  intimately  connected  with  those 
variations.  Thus  the  eastern  half  of  the  Transcaucasus 
was  Persian  far  longer  than  it  has  been  Russian.  North- 
ern Armenia  and  Mosul  have  frequently  been  subject  to 
Persia.  Mesopotamia  has  oftener  than  not  been  a  part 
of  that  empire.  As  for  Khorasan,  it  is  now  scarcely  a 
quarter  of  the  immense  Province  of  the  Sun  which  for- 
merly ran  out  to  the  Oxus  and  included  much  of  modern 
Afghanistan.  Yet  writers  of  rug  books  apologise  for 
relating  Herat  to  Meshed — when  it  is  not  a  hundred  years 
since  an  imaginary  line  was  drawn  between  them,  and 
scarcely  two  hundred  since  the  Afghans  made  their  official 
entrance  into  history.  It  is  extremely  important,  too,  to 
remember  that  Transoxiana  was  for  centuries  as  much 
a  part  of  Persia  as  Pars:  is  supposed,  indeed,  to  have  been 
the  birthplace  of  the  Iranian  race. 

The  geographical  background,  again,  is  intimately  asso- 
ciated with  the  historical.  The  latter  has  hitherto  been 
treated  in  far  too  summary  a  manner,  with  more  informa- 
tion about  the  Jews  and  the  Egyptians  than  about  the 
people  of  the  colder  regions  which  are  the  true  habitat 
of  the  rug.  As  yet  we  know  next  to  nothing  about  the 
origins  and  affiliations  of  our  art.  The  oldest  existing 
samples  of  rug  weaving  are  fragments  of  the  thirteenth 
or  fourteenth  centuries,  whereas  we  are  well  aware  that 
the  secret  of  knotting  strands  of  coloured  wool  on  a  foun- 
dation of  taut  strings  is  of  far  more  antique  invention. 
And  it  would  be  extremely  interesting  to  find  out  who 
discovered  this  secret.  The  Chinese,  perhaps,  whose 
civilisation  developed  so  early  and  so  widely?  We  know, 

222 


ABOUT  RUG  BOOKS 

at  all  events,  that  long  before  the  Christian  era  caravans 
were  passing  to  and  fro  between  Mongolia  and  Khorasan. 
A  pretty  point  waits  to  be  established,  too,  as  to  how  much 
the  Turks  took  with  them  into  Asia  Minor,  and  how  much 
they  found  there  when  they  arrived.  There  are  resem- 
blances between  Turkoman,  Caucasian,  and  Anatolian 
weaves  which  look  like  landmarks  of  an  old  migration. 
Yet  Marco  Polo,  who  passed  through  Asia  Minor  toward 
the  end  of  the  thirteenth  century,  found  Greeks  and 
Armenians  weaving  "the  finest  and  handsomest  carpets 
in  the  world/' 

This  is,  of  course,  a  subject  excessively  difficult  to 
approach,  by  reason  of  a  lack  of  documents.  Certain 
documents  do  exist,  however,  in  the  shape  of  old  Persian 
and  Arabic  geographies  or  histories.  Thus  we  know  that 
as  long  ago  as  the  tenth  century  Bokhara,  Samarkand, 
and  Tashkent  were  centres  of  carpet  weaving,  and  that 
this  Persian  manufacture  was  at  least  dabbled  in  by  the 
neighbouring  Turks  of  inner  Asia.  At  the  same  period 
looms  were  busy  in  Birjand,  Pars,  and  even  Mesopotamia. 
Under  the  Mongols  of  the  thirteenth  century  a  school  of 
rugs  grew  up  in  what  is  now  the  province  of  Mazanderan. 
Marco  Polo  does  not  specifically  mention  the  carpets  of 
Kerman,  but  he  speaks  of  "hangings  for  the  use  of  noble- 
men," while  I  have  noted  in  Howorth's  "History  of  the 
Mongols"  that  Ghazan,  the  Mongolian  Khan  of  Persia 
to  whom  Marco  Polo  brought  a  princess  out  of  China, 
caused  carpets  for  his  palace  to  be  woven  at  Shiraz.  And 
not  only  did  the  Venetians  who  two  hundred  years  later 
visited  the  court  of  the  Turkoman  king  Uzun  Hasan,  at 
Tabriz,  have  a  great  deal  to  say  in  passing  about  his  beauti- 
ful carpets,  but  innumerable  other  European  chroniclers 

223 


PERSIAN  MINIATURES 

and  travellers  of  the  Middle  Ages  mention  that  famous 
product  of  Persia. 

Other  documents  that  wait  to  be  deciphered  are  the 
historic  rugs  in  public  and  private  collections.  These  are 
the  old  masters  of  the  art,  which  with  the  exception  of  the 
Ardebil  of  South  Kensington  and  a  few  other  celebrated 
carpets  remain  strangely  unknown  to  most  of  our  experts. 
There  are  entire  books  to  be  made  out  of  the  museums. 
And  more  to  the  point  than  quoting  Scripture  and  the 
Odyssey,  or  describing  the  enormous  jewelled  carpet 
which  the  Arab  conquerors  found  and  cut  up  at  Ctesiphon 
in  637,  would  be  a  chapter — there  is  room  for  a  fat  mono- 
graph— on  the  rugs  of  pictures.  The  old  Dutch  and 
Italian  painters  could  furnish  between  them  a  priceless 
collection,  which  should  shed  no  little  light  on  the  history 
of  our  art.  Of  this  Mr.  W.  A.  Hawley,  at  least  ("Oriental 
Rugs,  Antique  and  Modern  "),  is  aware,  if  he  has  not  found 
time  to  go  so  thoroughly  into  the  subject  as  Bode  and 
Lessing. 

A  detail  of  less  importance,  but  one  of  which  a  scholarly 
rug  book  would  take  cognisance,  is  one  already  touched  on, 
namely  spelling.  There  is  the  more  excuse,  as  I  said  a  few 
pages  back,  for  the  inaccuracies  and  inconsistencies  in 
which  our  authors  abound,  because  the  Roman  alphabet 
was  not  invented  to  spell  the  English  language,  and  be- 
cause the  users  of  that  language  have  not  yet  fully  agreed 
on  how  to  convey  its  sounds.  The  case  is  further  com- 
plicated by  the  fact  that  other  sharers  of  the  Roman 
alphabet  have  sounds  and  systems  of  their  own,  into 
which  the  rug  book  people,  as  well  as  geographers  and 
writers  of  travel,  occasionally  dip.  Hence  that  d  in 
"sedjadeh"  and  that  /  in  "klatMi"  which  are  necessary 

224 


ABOUT  RUG  BOOKS 
\ 

to  the  Frenchman  but  superfluous  for  us.  More  super- 
fluous is  the  unwieldy  German  dsch  which  I  have  occasion- 
ally come  across  in  place  of  a  simple  English  ;.  Another 
complication  is  that  Oriental  languages  contain  sounds  for 
which  we  have  no  exact  equivalent.  Then  the  same  name 
may  be  pronounced  or  written  differently  by  an  Arab,  a 
Persian,  or  a  Turk,  or  even  by  dwellers  in  different  parts 
of  the  same  country.  A  case  in  point  is  the  habit  of  the 
Arabs  of  using  a  /  where  the  Persians  use  a  g.  Nor,  again, 
is  it  easy  to  settle  on  the  form  of  a  name.  To  the  people 
of  Persian  Kurdistan  the  name  of  their  capital,  known  to 
us  as  Sehna  or  Senna,  is  Senenduch,  while  Persians  and 
Turks  speak  of  it  as  Sineh.  The  ancient  city  of  Gordium, 
equally  well  known  in  carpet  literature,  enjoys  a  no  less 
wonderful  variety  of  titles,  of  which  the  Turkish  is  Gyor- 
dez  and  the  modern  Greek  Yorthes — with  the  ih  hard. 

But  even  when  we  agree  on  a  form,  we  seldom  agree  how 
to  convey  the  sound  of  that  form  to  the  Anglo-Saxon  eye 
and  tongue.  I  think  it  quite  hopeless  to  attempt  to  do 
so  by  means  of  any  phonetic  system  relying  on  the  more 
purely  English  combinations,  like  eet  00,  final  ie,  and  all 
the  rest.  There  are  too  many  phonetic  systems,  and  too 
few  people  understand  each  others/  Moreover  they  are 
rarely  consistent  or  complete.  Mr.  Mumford  and  his 
family,  for  instance,  usually  refer  to  a  well-known  Persian 
province  as  Azerbijan.  This  spelling  takes  for  granted, 
I  suppose,  that  the  reader  will  pronounce  the  /  as  in  kite, 
but  neglects  to  consider  the  fact  that  the  other  vowels 
must  be  uttered  in  a  way  which  does  not  come  natural  to 
Anglo-Saxons.  Our  only  hope  is  to  adopt  some  system 
like  that  of  the  Royal  Geographical  Society,  happily 
coming  into  vogue  among  our  own  editors  and  map- 

225 


PERSIAN  MINIATURES 

makers.  If  you  have  to  learn  its  conventions  in  order  to 
be  able  to  use  it,  so  do  you  with  any  other  system — Eng- 
lish being  the  patchwork  language  it  is.  And  this  system 
has  the  great  merit  of  being  both  simple  and  logical. 

A  lesser  but  by  no  means  negligible  detail  in  which 
the  existing  rug  books  fall  short  is  that  of  illustration. 
And  it  is  the  less  negligible  because  so  many  of  them  bid 
for  favour  on  the  score  of  their  coloured  plates.  As  a 
youthful  reader  of  romance  I  was  always  deeply  offended 
when  a  heroine  expressly  described  by  the  author  as  blonde 
was  portrayed  by  the  illustrator  as  a  brunette,  or  when 
the  death  of  the  villain  was  depicted  a  dozen  pages  be- 
fore or  after  the  event.  In  the  course  of  years  my 
destiny  led  me  into  the  retreats  where  these  crimes  are 
committed,  and  I  have  come  to  understand  how  they  take 
place.  But  with  me,  I  fear,  to  comprehend  is  not  to 
pardon.  As  a  mature  reader  of  rug  books  I  continue 
to  be  offended — by  pictures  that  seem  to  be  chosen  for 
airy  reasons  of  decoration  or  availability,  that  put  the 
student  to  the  greatest  possible  inconvenience  in  compar- 
ing them  with  the  text,  or  that  fail  to  do  all  they  can  for 
him  in  the  thorny  matter  of  classification.  Mr.  Hawley 
does  more  for  his  reader  than  any  one  else,  and  Dr.  Lewis 
is  in  this  respect  more  satisfactory  than  Mr.  Mumford — 
though  I  have  reason  to  suspect  that  if  Mr.  Mumford  had 
been  allowed  to  make  his  later  editions  more  than  re- 
prints he  would  have  improved  them  in  this  as  in  other 
particulars.  But  no  rug  book  that  I  have  come  across 
illustrates  all  the  stock  designs,  or  inserts  the  illustrations 
at  the  right  place.  A  small  black-and-white,  setting 
forth  an  essential  point  at  the  psychological  moment,  is 
worth  more  than  the  most  elaborate  coloured  plate  stuck 

226 


ABOUT  RUG  BOOKS 

in  where  it  is  most  convenient  for  the  folder  of  the  sheets 
and  most  economical  for  the  publisher  of  the  book. 

Among  other  matters  worth  consideration,  that  of 
the  technical  processes  of  rug  weaving  will  bear  more 
study  than  has  yet  been  given  them.  I  am  told  by  those 
who  know  more  about  such  things  than  I  do  that  the 
variety  of  knots  and  their  spacing  between  strands  of 
the  foundation  is  greater  than  the  rug  books  would 
lead  us  to  believe,  and  that  the  last  word  has  not  been 
said  about  the  materials  used.  Although  the  high,  dry 
climate  of  the  Asiatic  plateaux  is  commonly  averred  to 
be  responsible  for  the  sheen  and  softness  of  the  best 
rugs,  none  have  a  greater  softness  or  sheen  than  the  old 
Anatolians,  whose  wool  was  produced  not  far  from  sea 
level.  And  it  is  a  fact  that  perhaps  the  most  perfect 
rugs  made  in  Persia  to-day  are  woven  at  Kashan  out  of 
Australian  wool,  which  is  finer  and  silkier  than  any 
grown  in  "the  Orient." 

As  for  dyes,  ancient  and  modern,  the  rug  book  people 
beat  their  breasts  a  little  more  vehemently  than  they 
need.  They  mourn  the  growing  rarity  of  the  old  vege- 
table dyes,  and  they  do  well.  They  omit  to  add,  however, 
that  as  garish  horrors  have  been  perpetrated  with  vege- 
table dyes  as  with  mineral.  Nor  are  the  former  so  fast 
as  the  rug  books  contend.  On  the  contrary,  the  beauty 
of  vegetable  dyes  is  that  they  will  fade.  The  point  is 
that  they  fade  evenly,  one  shade  toning  into  another. 
Whereas  aniline  dyes  fade  unevenly.  The  reds  have  a 
tendency  to  retain  their  vigour,  while  certain  other 
colours  eventually  disappear.  A  greater  fault  is  that 
they  tend  to  harden  the  wool,  thereby  dulling  the  sheen 
which  is  the  honour  of  old  age.  But  in  Persia  and  Tur- 

227 


PERSIAN  MINIATURES 

key,  at  all  events,  aniline  dyes  are  employed  by  no  means 
so  generally  as  the  rug  book  people  imagine.  Not  only 
are  there  in  Persia  penalties  against  their  importation, 
and  against  the  exportation  of  rugs  in  which  they  are 
used,  but  it  is  quite  incorrect  to  say  as  Dr.  Lewis  does 
(pp.  78,  218)  that  two-thirds  or  three-quarters  of  mod- 
ern Turkish  rugs  are  aniline  dyed.  What  neither  he  nor 
any  one  else  mentions  is  the  growing  employment  of 
alizarin  dyes.  These  also  tend  to  harden  the  wool, 
though  it  remains  for  a  later  century  to  determine  the 
ultimate  effect  of  this  process.  But  their  greatest  fault 
is  the  mythic  virtue  ascribed  to  the  vegetable  dyes:  they 
will  neither  fade  nor  wash  out.  Whence  is  it  that  those 
who  use  them  incline  to  soft  shades  unknown  to  the  old 
weavers,  in  an  attempt  to  anticipate  the  tone  of  age  so 
prized  by  western  buyers. 

There  is  more  to  be  learned  than  we  yet  know  about 
the  colour  scale  of  different  weaves,  and  their  schemes  of 
colour  combination.  A  point  in  this  connection  which 
has  never  been  taken  up  is  that  of  outline.  If  you  look 
into  a  Persian  rug  you  will  discover  that  each  figure  is 
bounded  by  a  line  of  another  colour,  sometimes  so  fine  as 
to  be  almost  imperceptible.  Yet  this  inconspicuous 
outline  has  an  extraordinary  effect  on  the  field  of  colour 
it  encloses.  The  same  tint  will  have  an  entirely  dif- 
ferent look,  or  shade  into  different  directions  of  the  spec- 
trum, according  to  the  colour  of  its  outline.  Some 
schools  of  rugs,  like  the  Bijar,  have  been  found  to  follow 
invariable  rules  for  outlining.  A  wider  knowledge  of  such 
laws,  therefore,  would  of  course  be  a  help  in  identification. 

A  subject  of  the  utmost  complexity,  and  one  which 
awaits  a  profounder  scholarship  than  has  yet  dealt  with  it, 

228 


ABOUT  RUG  BOOKS 

is  that  of  design.  There  is  much  easy  talk  in  the  rug  books 
about  tribal  marks  and  symbols,  about  Greece,  Egypt, 
further  Asia,  and  Central  America,  about  palms,  lotuses, 
and  Trees  of  Life,  to  say  nothing  of  knots  of  destiny, 
stars  of  the  Medes,  shields  of  David  and  Solomon,  and 
S's  of  the  Fire  Worshippers.  It  all  tends,  however,  to 
excite  rather  than  to  satisfy  our  curiosity.  When  Dr. 
Lewis  announces  (p.  147)  that  he  has  devoted  more  con- 
sideration to  this  topic  than  any  of  his  predecessors,  he 
forces  the  critic  to  add  that  if  one  removed  from  Dr. 
Lewis's  chapter  on  design  everything  relating  to  China 
and  India  there  would  be  little  left  besides  hearsay  or 
guesswork.  And  the  value  of  his  claim  may  be  judged 
from  the  fact  that  in  the  rest  of  his  book  he  omits  any  men- 
tion whatever  of  Indian  rugs,  while  to  the  subject  of  China 
he  devotes  a  grand  total  of  six  pages. 

As  our  authors  study  the  map  and  read — perhaps  in 
Mr.  Mumford,  whose  treatment  of  this  vast  subject, 
however  inadequate,  is  again  more  worthy  than  that 
of  his  followers — of  the  caravans,  the  conquests,  the  mi- 
grations, which  have  swept  back  and  forth  across  Asia, 
it  no  doubt  seems  highly  plausible  to  them  that  a  motive 
originating  in  Egypt  or  India  should  find  lodgment  in  a 
Persian  or  Caucasian  rug.  Nor  can  any  one  deny  that 
the  transfusion  of  decorative  ideas  is  as  old  as  the  swastika. 
How  else  should  Persian  miniatures  and  portraits  of 
Lucrezia  Crivelli  be  hanging  in  an  English  house  in  Hama- 
dan?  The  period  of  cbinoiserie  in  European  ornament  is 
one  fanciful  chapter  of  this  tendency.  I  myself  might 
write  another  on  the  unexpected  places  where  I  have  found 
familiar  details  of  rugs.  I  have  seen  on  an  old  Resht 
embroidery,  and  above  a  dado  of  very  Chinese-looking 

229 


PERSIAN  MINIATURES 

tiles  in  a  fifteenth  century  mosque  at  Adrianople,  as 
in  the  marble  arch  of  more  than  one  Turkish  door,  the 
identical  pattern  of  reciprocal  trefoils  so  characteristic 
of  Caucasian  borders.  I  have  also  seen  Bulgarian  towels 
decorated  after  the  fashion  of  Anatolian  rugs,  to  say 
nothing  of  Kurdish  and  Persian  ones.  Then  many  of 
the  so-called  Rhodian  plates,  as  of  the  Turkish  tiles  of  the 
sixteenth  century,  bear  the  bent  and  serrated  lance-leaf 
of  the  mabi  (fish)  or  Herat  design.  And  as  for  that  lozenge 
or  spindle  which  the  rug  books  call  a  pole  medallion,  there 
is  no  end  to  the  repetitions  of  it  I  have  come  across — in 
rugs,  in  textiles,  in  embroideries,  in  the  painted  panels 
of  rooms,  on  the  tiled  walls  of  tombs  and  palaces  in  Con- 
stantinople, wrought  in  iron  for  the  enrichment  of  an 
Egyptian  door,  illuminated  in  miniatures  or  in  manu- 
scripts of  the  fourteenth  and  fifteenth  centuries,  tooled 
on  the  covers  of  innumerable  Arabic,  Persian,  and  Turkish 
books,  the  oldest  of  which  I  have  noted  was  bound  in 
Baghdad  in  the  eleventh  century.  And  in  New  York, 
in  the  twentieth  century,  an  American  publisher  repro- 
duced it  again  for  the  cover  of  this  book — from  the  back 
of  a  Persian  mirror. 

At  the  same  time,  no  one  who  has  not  been  in  the  East 
can  realise  the  immense  conservatism  of  Oriental  peoples, 
their  instinctive  suspicion  of  anything  foreign,  or  the 
extreme  difficulty  they  still  have  in  communicating  with 
one  another,  And  although  some  mystic  law  of  associa- 
tion invariably  causes  that  ample  phrase  "the  Orient" 
to  call  up  in  western  minds  a  picture  of  the  tropics,  the 
fact  remains  that  wool  rugs  are  primarily  the  product  of 
cold  climates.  One  should  think  twice,  therefore,  before 
adopting  the  theory  that  so  characteristic  a  Persian  design 

230 


ABOUT  RUG  BOOKS 

as  the  spindle  is  derived  from  so  exotic  a  plant  as  the  lotus 
— especially  when  so  competent  an  authority  as  Mr. 
Stanley  Lane-Poole  attributes  the  medallion  as  a  system 
of  ornament  to  the  Sasanians.  Neither  is  it  likely  that 
a  palm  could  suggest  very  much  to  a  man  who  never  set 
eyes  on  one.  Even  the  cypress  is  too  much  a  friend  of 
the  sun  to  be  very  familiar  to  the  highlanders  of  western 
Asia.  I  doubt,  moreover,  whether  it  is  safe  to  identify 
the  cypress  with  the  Tree  of  Life,  the  "sacred  Cocos  tree," 
and  other  mythic  vegetables.  The  Mohammedan  Tree 
of  Life,  or  the  tuba  as  Mr.  Mumford  correctly  names  it  in 
a  note,  is  of  course  an  authentic  specimen  of  the  botany 
of  design.  But  I  question  whether  the  weavers  of  Kerman 
ever  thought  about  the  tuba  of  the  other  world  when  they 
drew  their  delightful  pots  of  flowers.  And  I  am  still  more 
sceptical  of  Mr.  Hawley's  naturalisation  in  Persia  of 
Chinese  symbols  of  connubial  happiness.  His  pair  of 
ducks  on  a  famous  rug  in  the  Metropolitan  Museum 
might  perfectly  be  hens,  pigeons,  or  poppinjays — or  a 
heraldic  device  of  the  Mamelukes  of  Egypt. 

As  for  the  so-called  pear  pattern,  that  leaf-shaped  or 
flame-shaped  figure  for  which  the  rug  books  evolve  so 
many  fanciful  origins,  I  know  no  more  about  it  than  they. 
But  I  do  know  that  the  Persians  call  it  a  louteh,  meaning 
twig  or  bush,  by  which  name  they  further  designate  the 
camel-thorn  of  their  bare  plains.  And  I  have  seen  the 
same  design  on  old  Indian  silks,  as  in  photographs  of  a 
foliated  Egyptian  damask  of  the  thirteenth  or  fourteenth 
century,  of  a  Rhages  jar  of  the  thirteenth  century,  and 
of  the  tiles  of  the  mosque  of  Sidi  Okba  in  Kairuan,  which 
were  imported  from  Baghdad  in  the  ninth  century; 
while  the  Turks  used  to  employ  a  similar  motive  in  the 

231 


PERSIAN  MINIATURES 

guise  of  a  cypress  with  a  bent  top.  Only  under  the  most 
serious  reserves,  therefore,  should  one  countenance  any 
legend  of  crown  jewels,  Hindu  rivers,  and  what  not.  If 
the  buteb  represents  anything  at  all — on  which  there  is  no 
reason  to  insist — it  is  probably  a  conventionalisation  of 
some  plant  form,  and  far  more  ancient  than  the  regalia 
of  so  modern  a  dynasty  as  that  of  the  Kajars.  In  any 
case,  these  are  questions  not  to  be  answered  by  rug  pedlars 
or  by  gentlemen  who  have  been  three  times  to  Tiflis. 
Having  been  there,  myself,  only  twice,  and  then  having 
pursued  my  investigations  no  farther  than  the  railway 
station,  I  say  no  more ! 

I  will  say  one  word  more,  nevertheless,  with  regard  to 
the  future  of  Oriental  rugs.  This  is  a  topic  on  which  the 
rug  books  make  most  lugubrious  prophecies,  justly  anathe- 
matising the  use  of  aniline  dyes  and  a  suspicious  tendency 
of  this  Asiatic  craft  to  take  on  a  European  colour.  For 
myself,  I  am  less  agitated  about  the  aniline  peril  than 
about  the  other.  But  I  recognise  one  or  two  points  which 
the  ladies  and  gentlemen  of  the  rug  books  apparently 
ignore.  The  first  of  those  points  is  one  about  which  I 
have  already  said  a  little.  Strong  as  is  the  instinct  of 
Oriental  weavers  to  goon  repeating  themselves  indefinitely, 
there  have  always  been  individuals  among  them  who  were 
not  averse  to  a  novelty.  Thus  the  so-called  Isfahan  car- 
pets of  the  sixteenth  and  seventeenth  centuries  seem  to 
betray  that  European  influence  which  was  so  strong  at  the 
court  of  Abbas  Shah.  The  same  thing  sporadically  occurs 
in  places  so  far  away  from  each  other  as  Karabagh  and 
Kerman,  whose  weavers  appear  to  have  found  an  irresisti- 
ble attraction  in  the  European  treatment  of  the  rose,  so 
different  from  the  usual  Persian  conventionalisation  of 

232 


ABOUT  RUG  BOOKS 

that  flower.  The  Mongol  and  Turkoman  kings  of  Persia 
may  have  had  something  to  do  with  the  former  case, 
since  Karabagh  was  for  them  a  favourite  summer  resort, 
visited  by  many  a  European  who  brought  presents  from 
his  own  land.  And  freaks  of  design  turn  up  every  now 
and  then  from  the  most  unexpected  source — no  doubt  the 
whim  of  some  Persian  seigneur  who  happened  to  take  a 
fancy  to  a  European  gimcrack. 

One  of  the  most  unusual  examples  I  ever  saw  was  a 
rug  which  hung  in  our  own  house,  considered  by  the 
Sah'b  to  be  a  Hamadan.  This  Hamadan,  although  prop- 
erly knotted,  and  bearing  a  name  and  a  date  in  Arabic 
letters,  had  the  effect  of  a  bit  of  French  tapestry.  Yet  it 
looked  as  if  it  might  have  been  designed  after  a  picture 
by  Francesco  Guardi.  It  represented,  distinguishably 
enough,  St.  Mark's  basin  and  San  Giorgio  Maggiore,  with 
gondolas  and  figures  and  suggestions  of  rococo  drapery! 
The  beauty  of  it,  however,  was  the  lovely  Aubusson  red 
of  the  ground,  into  which  amazingly  managed  to  dissolve 
a  symphony  of  delicate  blues.  Such  a  piece,  of  course,  is 
an  extreme  type.  But  it  is  a  type  of  a  thing  which  has 
happened  in  every  art  and  every  time. 

Now  the  reason  why  this  thing  is  happening  in  Persia 
to-day,  happily  on  a  far  less  subversive  scale,  is  the  very 
reason  why  so  many  interesting  and  successful  rug  books 
are  being  written.  For  the  seigneurs  who  keep  busy  the 
looms  of  the  East  now  live  chiefly  in  the  West.  And  that 
is  why  the  simple  old  colours,  which  any  Persian  or  Turkish 
child  had  an  inimitable  secret  of  combining,  tend  to  refine 
themselves  into  the  pastel  shades  of  the  Smyrna,  Hamadan, 
and  Sultanabad  factories ;  why  the  complicated  old  designs 
run  more  and  more  to  open  grounds  of  a  single  tint ;  why 

233 


PERSIAN  MINIATURES 

we  see  fewer  of  those  irregularities,  both  in  colour  and 
execution,  which  add  charm  to  many  a  nomad  rug;  why 
dealers  are  driven  to  so  many  doubtful  expedients  for 
bleaching  and  toning.  The  truth  is  that  most  Americans 
do  not  like  the  rugs  which  most  Persians  prefer  to  weave. 
They  are  afraid  of  primary  colours,  and  they  are  more 
afraid  of  their  interior  decorator,  who  tells  them  that  no 
high-minded  person  puts  into  his  house  anything  which 
does  not  match  or  complement  everything  else.  They 
are  afflicted,  furthermore,  with  an  incurable  mania  for 
what  they  are  pleased  to  call  antiques.  Is  it  surprising, 
then,  that  they  get  what  they  want?  Yet  it  is  only  fair 
to  acknowledge  what  the  West  has  done  for  this  Oriental 
art,  at  a  time  when  in  the  Near  East  taste  and  patronage 
are  at  their  lowest  ebb — in  keeping  up  standards  of  de- 
sign, colour,  material,  and  craftsmanship.  If  it  were  not 
for  us,  everybody  in  Persia  and  Turkey  would  now  be  using 
aniline  dyes  and  imitating  staring  European  patterns. 

The  true  danger  lies  in  quite  another  quarter.  While 
Persia  has  for  centuries  exported  her  carpets,  the  narrow- 
ing of  the  modern  world  has  made  it  easy  to  exploit  this 
commerce  on  so  large  a  scale  that  the  weavers  can  no 
longer  sit  for  months  and  years  over  such  carpets  as  they 
wove  a  hundred,  two  hundred,  five  hundred  years  ago. 
As  it  is,  work  requiring  so  much  time  and  labour  could 
not  possibly  be  produced  in  western  countries,  save  in 
excessively  small  quantities.  Our  standards  of  life  are  so 
different  that  an  American  workman  of  the  skill  required 
to  weave  a  fine  rug  would  require  twenty  or  thirty  times 
the  wage  with  which  a  Persian  is  satisfied.  It  therefore 
pays  to  make  rugs  in  Persia  and  export  them  to  Europe 
and  America — and  will  pay  so  long  as  the  standards  of 

234 


ABOUT  RUG  BOOKS 

life  remain  in  Persia  what  they  are.  But  what  if  the 
standardising  of  the  world  should  continue  until  the 
Persian  no  longer  remained  content  with  his  mud  house, 
his  empty  rooms,  his  simple  pleasures?  Then  very  few 
of  us  could  afford  to  buy  his  rugs. 

It  may  be,  however,  that  the  war  of  mankind  will 
check  the  standardising  of  the  world,  will  encourage  inde- 
pendence and  individuality  and  simple  habits.  So  this 
most  firmly  rooted  of  Oriental  habits  may  for  a  long  time 
yet  run  no  great  danger  of  being  changed.  To  prophesy 
with  Dr.  Lewis,  at  any  rate,  that  "the  Orient"  is  being 
"robbed  of  its  fabrics  and  the  Persian  rug  will  have  be- 
come a  thing  of  the  past"  is  pure  nonsense.  There 
is  no  more  danger  of  the  Persian  rug  becoming  a  thing  of 
the  past  than  the  oil  painting.  The  old  masters  will 
disappear,  yes — save  for  connoisseurs  of  the  largest 
means.  But  the  secret  of  the  Persian  rug  is  by  no  means 
lost.  It  still  lives,  thank  heaven,  in  millions  of  Persian 
fingers,  to  say  nothing  of  Kurdish,  Tartar,  Turkish,  and  I 
don't  know  how  many  other  ones.  It  lives  so  energetically 
that  we  can  venture  to  wait  for  questions  of  taste,  for 
questions  of  chemistry,  even  I  hope  for  questions  of 
economics,  to  settle  themselves.  And,  here  and  there, 
under  leisurely  mud  roofs,  in  spite  of  the  craze  for  "an- 
tiques," in  spite  of  the  jeremiads  of  the  rug  books,  there 
are  being  woven  carpets  quite  as  good  as  came  from  the 
looms  of  Abbas  the  Great.  Nor  do  many  of  them  get 
into  the  hands  of  buyers  for  department  stores.  In  a 
hundred  years,  though,  what  prices  people  will  pay  for 
them — crying  out  on  the  degeneracy  of  their  day,  and  the 
exquisite  art  of  ours! 


235 


XIV 
THE  GRAMOPHONE 

I  have  not  made  one  complaint  against  Fortune,  since  I  know  she 

acts  under  compulsion. 
The  one  thing  which  from  time  to  time  troubles  me  is  my  longing 

for  Lahore. 

Masud-i-Sad-i-Salman 

A   GRAMOPHONE,  God  wot,  is  a  thing  of  hor- 
ror.   The  scrape  of  its  needle  would  be  detest- 
able enough  to  the  ear,  without  its  cheapness 
of  imitation.     And  the  seriousness  with  which 
millions  of  honest  citizens  listen  to  that  screeching  echo 
of  an  echo,  calling  it  music,  is  a  thing  to  stagger  one's 
faith  in  mankind.     For  absolute  music,   that  creative 
interlinking  of  sound  and  silence  which  the  hand  of  genius 
can  charm  out  of  dead  wood  and  metal,  is  what  the 
wretched  engine  evokes  least  successfully. 

And  yet !    And  yet  what  a  thing  it  is  that  a  living 

voice  or  an  immortal  violin  can  count  on  even  so  poor  an 
immortality!  And  as  the  camera,  whose  unaided  mir- 
acles are  in  themselves  too  literal  to  be  engaging,  has  done 
so  much  for  the  study  of  art  and  for  a  dozen  different 
kinds  of  comparative  research,  so  the  gramophone,  or  the 
phonograph,  might  be  an  invaluable  note-book.  I  re- 
member a  spring  day  long  ago  on  which  I  rowed  from  one 
to  another  of  the  gray  monasteries  which  look  out  from 

~* 

236 


THE  GRAMOPHONE 

Mt.  Athos  to  the  /Egean  Sea.  To  be  strictly  accurate,  I 
myself  did  not  row.  A  monkish-looking  person  did  that, 
in  a  rusty  black  robe  and  a -rusty  black  felt  cap  for  all  the 
world  like  a  Persian  kola,  telling  most  unmonastic  stories 
as  he  rowed.  I  lolled  in  the  stern,  enchanted  now  by 
him  and  now  by  a  young  Greek  who  sang  in  the  bottom 
of  the  boat.  The  latter  was  a  stone-cutter  from  Salonica 
who  had  been  carving  the  marble  gate  of  a  monastery  for 
his  uncle  the  abbot.  And  having  pocketed  a  pound  or 
two  for  his  handiwork,  he  lay  on  his  back  in  the  sun, 
between  the  boatman's  feet  and  mine,  singing  a  love-song 
of  his  people — so  long,  so  quaint,  so  new  to  me  and  wild, 
that  I  thought  I  never  should  forget  it.  But  I  did,  as  I 
have  forgotten  the  strange  march  I  heard  in  the  night  at 
Kazvin,  and  the  mad  music  of  the  Great  Slaughter,  and 
many  a  melancholy  air  that  has  made  me  walk  more 
slowly  past  a  tea  garden.  Whereas  if  I  had  only  pos- 
sessed one  of  those  horns  of  mystery  into  which  favourite 
opera  singers  bellow  their  favourite  airs,  I  might  have 
decorated  this  page  with  an  outlandish  enough  array  of 
minor  notes. 

Having  pretended,  however,  that  I  would  like  to  see 
myself  a  collector  of  folk  songs,  I  must  make  one  or  two 
confessions.  A  symphony,  it  is  true,  is  the  form  of  art 
which  upsets  me  more  than  any  other — unless  it  be  a 
string  quartette.  The  kind  couple  who  once  took  me  to 
hear  Strauss's  "Tod  und  Erklarung"  would  have  smiled 
to  know  what  a  new  heaven  and  a  new  earth  they  opened 
for  the  most  youthful  of  their  guests.  Nevertheless,  I 
cannot  deny  it:  I  like  an  opera!  It  isn't  because  I  prefer 
a  living  voice  to  a  violin.  For  me  an  Amati  rather  than 
an  Amato,  except  when  it  is  too  dark  for  any  distracting 

237 


PERSIAN  MINIATURES 

image  of  a  costume  or  of  a  self-consciousness  or  of  a  thirst 
for  applause.  The  singers,  though,  are  not  the  opera. 
That  is  something  more  complex,  interwoven  of  music, 
colour,  and  drama.  Not  that  the  latter  counts  for  any- 
thing by  itself.  Otherwise  who  could  keep  from  snick- 
ering at  the  absurdity  of  an  overfed  tenor  bawling  "I 
love  you!"  at  the  top  of  his  voice,  or  ordering  a  super  in 
liquid  roulades  to  shut  the  door?  I  may  have  heard 
"  Aida,"  say,  forty  times,  and  to  this  day  I  haven't  an  idea 
what  on  earth  it  is  about.  A  mere  poetic  flash  of  the 
human  is  all  an  opera  should  suggest,  a  pretty  face,  a 
gesture  of  despair,  to  warm  the  intertwining  of  sound 
and  colour.  It  is  a  shameless  polygamy  of  arts  at  best, 
but  one — dare  I  admit  it? — which  in  my  time  has  been 
more  potent  than  black  coffee  to  keep  me  awake  o' 
nights. 

But  the  worst  is  that  no  man  has  thrown  away  more 
gramophone  needles  or  used  up  more  records  than  I! 
Why,  do  you  suppose,  is  that?  Well,  it  need  not  be  be- 
cause I  like  the  scratch  or  the  screech.  It  might  be  be- 
cause any  strong  rhythm — a  cook  beating  eggs,  a  train 
bumping  over  rail-ends,  a  Persian  pounding  a  drum- 
makes  something  in  me  twitch.  It  might  be  because  I 
can  read  both  Dostoievsky  and  Jack  London — or  John 
Kendrick  Bangs,  if  you  prefer.  It  might  be  because  I 
sometimes  find  quite  as  much  profit  in  the  artistic  works 
of  Messrs.  Goldberg,  Maurice  Ketten,  and  Fontaine 
Fox  as  in  the  exhibitions  of  the  Academy.  In  Ham- 
adan  it  might  be  because  we  have  precious  few  ways  of 
amusing  ourselves.  And  what  did  Kipling  say  about 
rafting  a  Broad  wood  up  the  Nile?  Somebody  rafted  a 
Steinway  up  the  Tigris  safely  enough  for  a  missionary 

238 


THE  GRAMOPHONE 

friend  of  ours;  but  the  last  lap  over  the  mountains  from 
Khanikin  landed  at  the  unhappy  recipient's  door  nothing 
but  a  wreck  of  matchwood  and  twisted  wire. 

A  gramophone,  however,  if  less  portable  than  a  banjo, 
might  have  made  the  poet  sing  a  different  song  if  he  had 
been  born  a  decade  or  two  later.  For  it  waits  on  no 
skilled  plucker  of  strings  to  provide  first  aid  for  the  caller, 
time  for  the  dancer,  and  lightness  for  the  leaden  hour. 
Then  a  pile  of  records  containing  Caruso,  Harry  Lauder, 
and  "Nearer  my  God  to  thee,"  is  potent  with  ironic  pos- 
sibilities. And  are  they  Memory  and  Torment?  Are 
they  Town?  Are  they  all  that  ever  went  with  evening 
dress?  As  to  that  I  am  no  poet,  alas,  and  I  have  a  dinner 
jacket  in  my  cupboard.  I  can  only  say  that  that  abomin- 
able needle  will  scratch  me  away  a  wall  and  renew  me  a 
youth  as  uncannily  as  any  sudden  scent. 

That  poor  old  tottering  sawhorse,  now,  the  "Barcarolle" : 
to  opera  goers  and  gramophone  fiends  there  is  only  one 
"Barcarolle"!  But  why  should  it  always  make  so  much 
more  vivid  to  me  than  flat-roofed  Hamadan  and  white 
Elvend  the  gables  of  Dresden  and  the  half-frozen  Elbe? 
Do  they  still  call  the  Cafe  de  Paris  the  Cafe  de  Paris,  I 
wonder — where,  in  that  winter  after  the  resurrection  of 
the  "Tales  of  Hoffmann"  from  the  archives  of  the  burned 
Opera  House  at  Vienna,  an  admirable  little  orchestra  used 
to  play  the  "Barcarolle"?  Though  it  give  comfort  to  the 
enemy  I  must  swear  that  never  have  I  eaten  such  cakes 
or  drunk  such  coffee  as  in  the  Cafe  de  Paris  in  Dresden. 
Perhaps  they  tasted  so  because  I  was  then  living  on  let- 
tuce and  sour  milk  at  a  mad-house  a  little  way  up  the 
river.  Each  Tuesday  night  we  used  to  have  a  concert  in 
that  most  enlivening  of  mad-houses,  followed  by  a  dance 

239 


PERSIAN  MINIATURES 

that  ended  at  ten  o'clock  sharp — or  was  it  nine?  Im- 
possible to  find  out  now,  even  from  a  Konversa^ionsdame. 
There  were  two  Konversa^ionsdamen — one  blonde,  who 
sat  at  the  Korpulententisch,  and  one  brunette,  who  sat  at 
the  Magerntiscb.  Their  business  was  to  converse  with 
the  maniacs  and  to  introduce  them  one  to  another. 
There  subsisted,  of  course,  a  bitter  enmity  between  these 
ladies,  so  that  if  you  danced  with  one  you  would  be  refused 
by  the  other.  And  you  should  have  seen  how  beauti- 
fully the  brunette  Konver salons dame  waltzed  with  the 
Count  from  the  Korpulententisch,  when  the  orchestra 
played  "Night  of  stars!  O  night  of  love!"  As  for  me, 
I  waltzed  with  the  widow  from  Lodz.  Poor  dears!  I 
wonder  what  has  become  of  them  all  now. 

"Mignon"  also  has  hostile  affiliations,  of  course;  but  a 
Frenchman  wrote  the  score,  and  it  never  fails  to  take  me 
back  to  that  dirty  old  Teatro  Rossini  where  I  first  heard 
it.  I  was  very  young  then,  and  extremely  poor,  and 
didn't  mind  it  a  bit.  So  I  used  to  go  to  the  opera  as 
often  as  I  could  afford  ten  or  twelve  cents  for  the  top 
gallery,  where  the  seats  were  not  reserved  and  where 
if  you  arrived  late  you  saw  nothing.  The  night  I  first 
heard  "Mignon"  I  arrived  late.  I  therefore  saw  noth- 
ing. Nothing,  that  is,  but  one  glimpse  of  somebody's 
long  white  hand,  with  a  ruffle  falling  over  it  and  a  magni- 
ficent stage  jewel  sparkling  on  one  finger.  It  was  a 
man's  hand,  too,  I  fear.  But  when  the  gramophone 
scratches  out  "  Kennst  Du  das  Land,"  with  an  extra 
scratch  every  second  because  the  record  is  cracked,  it 
only  sounds  more  like  those  Italian  fiddles.  It  even 
smells  like  that  stuffy  Italian  gallery,  full  of  broad-brimmed 
black  hats  and  fringed  black  shawls  folded  cornerwise. 

240 


THE  GRAMOPHONE 

Then  Caruso:  I  am  of  such  an  antiquity  that  I  hap- 
pened to  be  on  hand  during  his  first  American  season, 
when  he  came  to,  saw,  and  conquered  New  York.  I  don't 
think  I  went  to  his  first  night.  But  I  did  go  to  his  last 
one,  when  he  sang  "  Lucia"  if  I  remember  correctly,  and 
when  in  almost  his  final  solo  his  voice  cracked  worse  than 
any  record,  as  I  never  heard  his  or  anybody  else's  voice 
crack  on  the  stage.  And  how  we  clapped  him  after  it! 
And  how  in  Hamadan  we  can  listen  to  those  thread-bare 
old  Italian  songs,  hearing  not  them  but  all  manner  of 
queer  things  behind  them  from  which  time  and  distance 
shut  us  away! 

Of  all  Italian  songs  none  can  be  more  threadbare 
than  the  Miserere,  from  "II  Trovatore."  Yet  the  most 
ignoble  confession  I  have  to  make  is  that  I  hide  in  the 
bottom  of  my  heart  a  guilty  love  for  it,  compounded  out 
of  amusement  at  the  senseless  plot  of  the  opera,  which  I 
have  never  fathomed  and  never  want  to,  out  of  the  killing 
way  in  which  the  tenor  rushes  out  of  prison  to  kiss  his 
hand  to  the  audience  when  the  pack-thread  duet  is  done, 
and  out  of  some  theory  I  used  to  have  about  its  being  more 
typically  Italian  than  anything  else;  but  chiefly  out  of 
the  fact  that  it  was  the  first  opera  I  ever  heard.  I  heard 
it  in  English,  too,  in  Boston,  and  it  ravished  my  innocent 
soul  to  the  seventh  heaven.  However,  there  came  a  day, 
or  rather  a  long  succession  of  nights,  when  I  used  to  lie 
in  bed  and  hear  the  Grand  Canal  lap  under  my  window. 
The  sound  of  it,  and  of  oars  dipping  between  the  dark 
palaces,  was  better  than  any  opera.  And  so  was  the  disem- 
bodied voice  that  sang  one  night,  to  the  strum  of  a  distant 
guitar,  with  a  passion  no  tenor  could  pump  out  of  a  canvas 
dungeon,  " Non  ti  scordar!  Non  ti  scordar  di  me!" 

241 


PERSIAN  MINIATURES 

No,  caro  mio;  I  never  shall,  to  my  dying  day.  And  if  the 
day  after  that  I  find  myself  in  a  place  half  so  heavenly  as 
Venice  on  a  summer  night,  and  the  golden  harps  sound 
in  the  least  like  a  guitar  on  the  lagoon,  and  the  angels  sing 
anything  that  begins  to  be  so  perfect  a  pattern  of  a  lyric, 
I  shall  count  myself  not  so  badly  off  after  all.  And  what 
has  all  this  to  do  with  Persia,  or  gramophones  either?  Very 
little,  reader;  very  little.  It  is  odd,  though,  how  unex- 
pectedly a  leaden  hour  may  be  lightened,  and  how  much 
of  the  quality  of  things  lies  outside  themselves. 


242 


XV 
THE  SEA  OF  SCIENCES 

Whomever  ihou  seest  in  tine  saintly  garb, 
Suppose  Mm  tole  a  wise  man  and  a  saint. 

PERSIAN  PROVERB 


IN  PERSIA  there  are,  with  certain  exceptions  that 
prove  the   rule,  no  family   names  and   no  hered- 
itary  titles.     Every   gentleman    is    a    Khan,   that 
is,   a  landowner.    Some   of    them,    in    truth,   own 
very   little   land.    Our   cook  had  pretensions  to  being 
a  Khan;  and  having  divorced  his  first  wife  while  both  of 
them  were  in  their  teens,  he  took  to  his  bosom  an  elderly 
descendant  of  the  Prophet.     His  sons  will  wear  green 
turbans  and  be  called  Seid.    These  people  form,  to  be 
sure,  a  species  of  nobility.    They  are  so  numerous,  how- 
ever, and  the  pedigrees  of  most  of  them  are  so  much  more 
obscure  than  in  Turkey  or  Arabia,  that  their  credit  is 
chiefly  with  the  common  people. 

But  no  great  personage  and  few  small  ones  are  without 
a  title  of  a  sort.    Such  titles  carry  no  distinctions  of  degree 

243 


PERSIAN  MINIATURES 

and  they  are  not  hereditary.  In  a  few  princely  houses 
they  have  a  hereditary  colour  from  the  fact  that  the  son  is 
granted  the  title  worn  by  his  father.  These  resonant 
titles  are  glorified  nicknames,  really,  bestowed  by  the 
Shah  in  reward  for  personal  merit  or  services,  and  they 
thereafter  take  the  place  of  the  bearer's  true  name.  The 
majority  of  them  have  in  their  flowery  way  a  governmental 
flavour — as  Sabre  of  the  Dynasty,  or  Stability  of  the 
Realm.  I  have  read  of  a  small  boy,  son  of  a  provincial 
chieftain,  who  was  decorated  with  a  patent  as  Tiger  of  the 
Sovereignty.  A  certain  Captain  Massakroff  of  Tehran 
is  announced  at  court  as  Unique  One  of  the  Kingdom. 
A  great  lady  may  be  Chastity  of  the  State,  Full  Moon  of 
the  Dominion,  Gaiety  of  the  Dynasty,  or  simply  Solace 
of  the  Eyes.  A  palace  eunuch  signs  himself  Magnificence 
of  the  Royal  Intimacy!  A  professional  man  may  earn 
the  right  to  be  known  as  Illustrious  among  the  Physicians, 
or  Sun  of  the  Learned,  or  Adorner  of  the  Monarchy. 
The  last,  if  you  please,  is  a  painter  of  miniatures.  Two 
famous  artists  of  the  Timurid  period  were  the  Pillar  of  the 
Painters  and  the  Choicest  of  the  Penmen.  The  name  of 
the  poet  Bedi-al-Zaman  of  Hamadan,  whose  panegyric 
of  his  native  town  I  quoted  at  the  top  of  an  earlier  chapter, 
means  Miracle  of  the  Age.  A  citizen  who  made  an 
address  of  welcome  to  the  Shah  was  instantly  dubbed 
Tongue  of  the  Presence.  And  I  have  heard  of  a  character 
in  a  comedy  who  was  satirically  honoured  with  the  style 
of  Uncleanness  of  Commerce.  This  is  the  tradition  out 
of  which  sprang  the  nicknames  Chief  of  the  Desert  and 
Prince  All  Alone,  by  which  the  Sah'b  and  I  are  known 
below  stairs. 

I  have  the  honour  to  take  lessons  in  Persian  from  the 

244 


THE  SEA  OF  SCIENCES 

Sea  of  Sciences.  The  Sea  of  Sciences  is  not,  as  you  may 
suppose,  a  man  in  years.  He  might  be  thirty.  He  might 
be  forty.  At  any  rate,  the  taste  of  life  is  still  sharp  on 
his  tongue.  Nothing  astonishes  him  more  than  that  I 
do  not  take  his  advice  and  let  a  skilled  barber  of  his  race 
treat  my  hair,  first  with  red  henna  and  then  with  blue 
indigo,  in  order  to  hide  the  all  too  evident  ravages  im- 
printed upon  me  by  the  cares  of  this  world  and  the  deceit- 
fulness  of  riches;  and  I  notice  that  he  relishes  a  risque  story. 
His  dark  robe,  however,  his  white  turban,  and  his  clipped 
round  beard,  are  marks  of  the  cult.  Still,  I  do  not  gather 
that  he  belongs  to  the  hierarchy  of  the  church  or  the  law. 
I  take  it  that  he  is  the  natural  product  of  a  land  in  which 
learning  has  always  worn  the  colours  of  divinity.  His 
true  place  is  among  the  mir^as — and  not  among  those  who 
are  princes.  In  fact,  the  Sea  of  Sciences  strikes  me  as 
being  not  quite  a  gentleman.  He  prefers  to  enter  the 
house  by  the  kitchen  door.  I  think  he  likes  to  get  the 
news  from  the  cook — and  perhaps  a  cooky.  He  has 
very  much  the  air  of  being  engaged  in  making  his  fortune. 
He  should  make  a  good  one,  with  his  quick  wit,  his  sense 
of  humour,  his  varied  information,  and  the  belief  I  seem 
to  divine  in  him  of  the  end  justifying  the  means.  But  I 
must  not  give  the  impression  that  he  has  no  manners. 
He  always  comes  up  to  my  study  in  his  stocking  feet,  as 
an  Oriental  should,  in  order  to  preserve  the  house  from 
the  defilements  of  the  street.  Arrived  at  my  door,  he 
knocks — which  is  more  than  the  servants  can  be  counted 
on  to  do — he  bows,  he  puts  his  hand  to  his  heart,  and  he 
enters  into  the  most  complicated  inquiries  about  my  exact 
state  of  health.  I  likewise  bow,  I  make  a  feint  of  putting 
an  awkward  hand  on  the  place  where  a  heart  should  be, 

245 


PERSIAN  MINIATURES 

I  emit  grotesque  concatenations  of  plural  nouns  and  singu- 
lar verbs.  The  Sea  of  Sciences  then  lays  off  his  aba,  looks 
doubtfully  at  Jimmy,  pokes  the  fire,  and  sets  about  teach- 
ing me  Persian. 

The  beauty  of  this  operation  is  that  the  Sea  of  Sciences 
knows  not  a  syllable  of  English  or  any  other  European 
language,  while  I  am  acquainted  with  no  word  of  Persian 
or  Arabic.  Neither  of  us,  furthermore,  owns  such  a  thing 
as  a  grammar,  a  reader,  or  a  dictionary.  But  the  Sea  of 
Sciences,  they  say,  although  he  does  not  like  to  admit 
descent  from  a  race  considered  by  the  Persians  to  be  all 
that  is  gross  and  stupid,  is  of  Turkish  origin;  and  I  have 
lived  in  Stambul — or  as  the  Sea  of  Sciences  prefers  me  to 
say,  Islambol.  There  are  many  Turks,  or  Turkish- 
speaking  people,  in  and  around  Hamadan — more  than 
anywhere  else  in  Persia  except  Azerbaijan.  They  belong 
to  the  Turkoman  tribe  of  the  Kara-Gozlu,  the  Black 
Eyed,  which  has  pretensions  to  equal  rank  with  that  of 
the  reigning  Kajar.  It  surprised  me  not  a  little  to  find 
these  people  in  Ecbatana,  though  I  understood  it  better 
when  I  considered  that  the  Turks  had  to  cross  Persia 
before  they  could  get  into  Turkey,  and  that  they  must 
have  begun  doing  so  a  long  time  ago.  So  long  ago  was  it, 
however,  that  Turki,  as  the  Sea  of  Sciences  calls  his 
dialect,  and  Stanibuli,  as  he  calls  mine,  are  about  as  much 
alike  as  Spanish  and  Italian.  Still,  necessity  is  the  mother 
of  comprehension.  Hence  we  succeed,  partially,  painfully, 
and  even  more  darkly  than  is  usual  of  human  intercourse, 
in  communicating  one  with  the  other.  And  the  result  is  that 
I  pick  up  a  certain  amount  of  Turki,  if  very  little  Persian. 

For  the  learning  of  letters  a  book  is  not  necessary,  and 
least  of  all  Arabic  letters,  which  are  written  and  printed  in 

246 


THE  SEA  OF  SCIENCES 

the  same  way.  When  it  came  to  the  point  of  accustom- 
ing my  eye  to  the  look  of  letters  in  combination — and 
Arabic  letters  have  a  mystifying  habit  of  changing  their 
shape  according  as  they  fall  at  the  beginning,  the  middle, 
or  the  end  of  a  word — our  lack  of  literature  was  supplied 
by  a  good  missionary.  She  lent  us  a  Gospel  of  St.  John, 
in  Persian.  Now  I  must  confess  that  I  am  not  greatly 
given  to  searching  the  Scriptures.  Perhaps  it  is  because 
the  heart  of  man  is  naturally  depraved  and  desperately 
wicked.  Perhaps  because  the  feet  of  my  youth  were  set 
so  firmly  on  the  strait  and  narrow  path  as  to  arouse  in  me 
a  perverse  latent  inclination  to  stray  among  byways.  At 
all  events,  the  words  of  Holy  Writ  were  too  early  familiar 
to  me  to  wear  any  glamour  of  the  unknown.  But  I  have 
also  to  confess  to  a  curious  psychological  reaction  that 
took  place  in  me  when  I  began  to  spell  out,  haltingly  as  a 
kindergartener,  under  the  keen  black  eye  of  the  Sea  of 
Sciences,  the  Persian  sentence:  "In  the  beginning  was 
the  Word  .  .  ."  It  was,  you  know,  as  if  I  had  never 
read  that  high  word  before.  And  I  discovered  that  be- 
cause the  Sea  of  Sciences  regarded  the  Gospel  of  St.  John 
with  a  good  deal  of  irony,  I  somehow  became,  if  not  its 
impassioned  advocate,  at  least  unwilling  to  take  part 
against  it.  So  far  did  I  go  to  learn  that  though  a  man 
may  be  what  is  called  a  free  thinker,  no  man  can  be  free 
of  the  things  that  make  him  think  as  he  does  or  escape 
the  consequences  of  his  birth!  I  saw  myself,  after  all,  a 
product  of  the  tradition  that  accepts  the  Gospel  of  St. 
John.  And  for  the  first  time  in  my  life  I  began  to  look 
with  an  eye  of  sympathy  upon  that  Hellenised  Hebrew 
dreamer  who  was  capable  of  writing:  "In  the  beginning 
was  the  Word  .  .  ." 

247 


PERSIAN  MINIATURES 

The  Sea  of  Sciences  entertains  quite  different  ideas  as 
to  what  was  in  the  beginning.  He  was  good  enough  to 
give  me  some  account  of  his  own  ideas,  and  I  found  them 
not  quite  identical  with  those  so  poetically  put  forward  in 
the  Book  of  Genesis.  It  seems  that  what  really  was  in 
the  beginning  was  water,  upon  which  floated  the  throne  of 
the  Creator.  He  began  the  work  of  creation  by  causing  a 
dense  vapour  to  rise  from  the  water  and  subjecting  the 
liquid  remainder  to  a  process  of  drying.  This  resulted  in 
the  formation  of  the  seven-fold  earth  and  its  seven  seas. 
The  earth  rested  on  the  fin  of  a  fish,  the  fish  and  its  encir- 
cling element  were  supported  by  blocks  of  stone,  those 
reposed  on  the  back  of  an  angel,  the  angel  stood  on  a  rock, 
and  the  rock  was  upheld  by  the  wind. 

These  operations  took  place  on  Sunday  and  Monday, 
the  first  and  second  of  April — in  so  much  detail  is  it  known 
to  the  Sea  of  Sciences  what  happened  in  the  beginning. 
On  the  Tuesday  mountains  were  added  to  the  newly 
created  earth,  in  order  to  increase  its  stability.  Whence 
is  it  that  earthquakes  are  rarer  than  they  were  in  the 
beginning,  when  the  movements  of  the  fish  bearing  our 
world  caused  terrible  commotions.  The  work  of  Wed- 
nesday was  the  invention  of  trees,  plants,  and  all  vegetable 
life.  On  the  next  two  days  did  the  Lord  perfect  his  first 
rude  sky  of  vapour,  dividing  it  into  seven  heavens  of 
which  the  first  was  green  emerald — I  quote  from  the  Sea 
of  Sciences — the  second  silver,  the  third  red  ruby,  the 
fourth  pearl,  the  fifth  pure  gold,  the  sixth  topaz,  the 
seventh  and  highest  a  firmament  of  burning  fire,  in  which 
hover  unscorched  a  myriad  of  angels  singing  the  praise 
of  God.  And  this  firmament  is  so  immense  that  although 
the  angels  stand  with  one  foot  enough  higher  than  the 

248 


THE  SEA  OF  SCIENCES 

other  for  a  man  to  need  five  hundred  years  to  make  the 
journey  between  them,  their  heads  are  yet  far  below  the 
uppermost  throne  of  the  Most  High.  Beneath  his  throne 
God  fixed  a  sea  containing  sustenance  for  all  living  beings. 
From  time  to  time,  the  Sea  of  Sciences  assures  me,  there 
is  let  down  from  the  seventh  heaven  to  the  first  such  a 
quantity  of  water  as  is  meted  out  to  man  for  the  irrigation 
of  fields.  God  then  gives  orders  to  the  winds  to  carry  the 
water  to  the  clouds  above  the  earth,  out  of  which  it  is 
sifted  in  the  form  of  rain. 

This  work  was  completed  on  Friday,  April  sixth.  Fri- 
day is  called  Junta,  or  union,  because  on  that  day  the 
creation  of  the  skies  was  united  to  that  of  the  earth: 
whence  also  do  the  faithful  make  that  day  the  one  on 
which  they  unite  in  mosques  for  particular  prayer.  But 
what  the  Sea  of  Sciences  failed  to  make  quite  clear  to  me 
is  how  the  creation  of  man  fitted  into  this  calendar.  It 
seems  that  before  Adam  there  were  jinn,  created  out  of 
the  fire  of  the  seventh  heaven,  who  were  set  upon  the 
earth  to  guard  it.  They  behaved  in  so  unbecoming  a 
manner,  however,  that  one  of  their  number,  named  Iblis, 
begged  to  be  separated  from  the  other  jinn.  He  was 
accordingly  named  guardian  of  the  first  or  emerald 
heaven,  his  former  companions  being  scattered  into  space 
by  the  angels  of  the  seventh  heaven.  And  this  preemi- 
nence of  Iblis  was  the  cause  of  his  downfall,  because  pride 
had  invaded  his  heart,  as  the  Sea  of  Sciences  pointed  out 
to  me.  God  in  the  meantime  imparted  to  the  angels  his 
intention  of  creating  another  guardian  of  the  earth,  who 
should  be  his  vicar  there.  The  angels,  hearing  that  the 
descendants  of  this  new  being  would  in  turn  cover  the 
earth  with  blood  and  disorder,  like  the  dispersed  jinn, 

249 


PERSIAN  MINIATURES 

permitted  themselves  to  express  surprise  that  they  should 
not  rather  be  chosen,  who  spent  their  days  in  praising 
God  and  blessing  him.  Whereupon  the  Most  High  re- 
buked them,  saying:  "I  know  what  is  unknown  to  you/' 
He  then  sent  the  archangel  Gabriel  to  bring  him  from  the 
earth  a  lump  of  clay  out  of  which  to  mould  the  new  being; 
but  the  earth  protested  in  such  alarm  that  Gabriel  re- 
turned to  the  seventh  heaven  without  fulfilling  his  mis- 
sion. The  same  thing  happened  with  the  archangel 
Michael,  the  earth  crying  out:  "I  invoke  God  against 
thee  if  thou  do  me  hurt/'  So  Azrael,  in  turn,  the  dark 
angel  of  death,  silenced  the  earth  by  replying:  "God  pre- 
serve me  from  ascending  again  to  heaven  without  carrying 
out  his  command!"  The  clay  which  Azrael  took  back 
to  heaven  was  of  three  kinds,  white,  red,  and  black,  which 
God  wrought  with  his  fingers  and  then  let  lie  for  forty 
years.  This,  the  Sea  of  Sciences  tells  me,  is  why  the  races 
of  men  are  of  different  colours.  For  two  more  periods 
of  forty  years  did  the  Creator  allow  the  clay  of  the  earth 
to  lie  inanimate,  after  kneading  it  with  his  hands.  In 
the  meantime  he  commanded  the  angels  and  Iblis  to 
bow  down  before  his  new  creation.  The  angels  at  once 
obeyed.  As  for  Iblis,  whose  heart  was  filled  with  pride 
and  envy,  he  refused,  even  contemptuously  kicking  the 
clay — he  who  was  formed  out  of  the  fire  of  the  seventh 
heaven.  Wherefore  was  he  cast  out  of  his  emerald  heaven 
in  disgrace  until  the  Judgment  Day.  Then  the  Lord 
began  to  blow  into  the  clay,  which  became  limp  and 
flexible  as  the  breath  of  God  entered  every  part  of  it. 
And  Adam's  first  act  of  life  was  to  sneeze. 

The  Sea  of  Sciences  did  not  attempt  to  harmonise  this 
account  with  his  statement  that  the  creation  of  Adam  was 

250 


THE  SEA  OF  SCIENCES 

completed  on  the  same  day  as  that  of  the  seven  heavens. 
He  went  on  to  tell  me  the  story  of  Eve,  much  as  I  had 
heard  it  before,  adding  that  our  first  parents  were  put 
into  Paradise  on  the  third  hour  of  that  day,  and  that  they 
stayed  there  no  more  than  three  hours.  But  those  three 
hours,  he  explained  to  me,  were  equivalent  to  250  years. 
The  story  of  the  Serpent  was  also  like  that  of  Genesis. 
When,  however,  I  desired  to  know  if  the  Serpent  and 
Iblis  were  one,  the  Sea  of  Sciences  was  not  quite  certain. 
Yet  he  was  able  to  inform  me  that  the  Serpent  was  ex- 
pelled like  Adam  and  Eve  from  the  Garden,  being  sent 
to  Isfahan,  while  Eve  was  removed  to  Jiddeh  and  Adam 
to  Ceylon.  Upon  arriving  there  the  latter  had  in  the 
way  of  garments  nothing  but  the  leaves  of  Paradise. 
These  soon  dried  in  the  hot  sun  of  Ceylon,  and  the  wind 
dispersed  them  in  dust  throughout  India.  Whence  is  it 
that  that  country  abounds  in  aloes,  cloves,  musk,  and 
every  kind  of  spice  and  aromatic  plant. 

How  long  Adam  and  Eve  were  separated,  the  Sea  of 
Sciences  did  not  specify.  But  they  were  presently  re- 
united at  Arafat,  the  Place  of  Recognition,  near  Mecca, 
where  great  ceremonies  are  celebrated  during  the  Feast  of 
Sacrifice.  It  was  after  this  meeting  that  Cain,  Abel, 
and  Seth  were  born.  What  was  new  to  me  was  to  hear 
that  Cain  and  Abel  had  twin  sisters,  each  of  whom  be- 
came the  wife  of  the  other's  twin  and  so  ensured  the 
continuation  of  the  race.  As  for  Adam,  he  died  at  last 
on  another  Friday,  the  sixth  of  April,  when  he  was  930 
years  old.  Which  is  another  reason  why  Mohammedans 
keep  that  day  holy.  And  the  Sea  of  Sciences  assured  me 
that  these  facts  had  first  come  down  by  direct  revelation, 
and  had  then  been  handed  on  from  generation  to  genera- 

251 


PERSIAN  MINIATURES 

tion  by  men  of  the  most  unimpeachable  authority,  so 
that  there  could  be  no  manner  of  doubt  about  them. 
He  did  admit,  though,  that  different  authorities  gave 
different  versions  of  several  of  the  details,  adding  piously: 
"God  better  knows  the  truth." 

I  know  not  whether  it  is  the  evident  interest  I  betray 
in  these  matters,  or  a  desire  to  implant  sound  doctrine, 
that  leads  the  Sea  of  Sciences  to  tell  me  many  more 
things  about  his  beliefs  and  customs  than  you  would  have 
patience  to  hear.  If  a  certain  book  of  poetry  downstairs 
in  the  library  opened  my  ears  to  what  he  had  to  say  about 
the  seven  seas,  to  say  nothing  of  the  seven  heavens, 
I  did  not  close  them  when  he  mentioned  seven  planets 
and  the  seven  climates  of  earth  subject  to  the  same,  each 
having  a  door  by  which  one  may  penetrate  into  life,  un- 
locked by  mystic  polygonal  keys  of  which  the  first  is  a 
triangle  and  the  seventh  a  nonagon.  The  seven  doors 
are  science,  wealth,  power,  will,  pity,  wisdom,  and — 
what?  Experience?  Common  sense?  I  couldn't  quite 
make  out!  I  did  make  out,  however,  that  Hamadan 
lies  in  the  fourth  climate.  The  Sea  of  Sciences  further  in- 
formed me  that  that  name  is  derived  according  to  some 
from  the  name  of  a  great-grandson  of  Noah,  and  accord- 
ing to  others  from  two  Arabic  words  meaning  All  Knowing. 
For  the  rest,  he  flatters  Hamadan  no  more  than  did  old 
Bedi-al-Zaman.  He  is  frank  to  say  that  out  of  our 
hundred  thousand  inhabitants — foreigners  put  the  figure 
at  twenty-five  to  seventy  thousand — no  more  than  forty 
or  fifty  are  ,true  Mohammedans,  reading  the  Koran,  shav- 
ing their  heads,  making  their  ablutions  with  due  regular- 
ity, and  then  causing  the  water  to  run  from  the  elbow  to 
the  fingers  and  not  from  the  fingers  to  the  elbow  like  those 

252 


THE  SEA  OF  SCIENCES 

heretical  Turks.  Of  that  other  arch  heretic  the  Caliph 
Yezid  of  Damascus,  who  caused  the  murder  of  the  Imam 
Hosein,  it  is  enough  for  the  Sea  of  Sciences  to  tell  me  that 
he  drank  wine  and  habitually  petted  dogs.  This  with  a 
glance  over  the  shoulder  at  Jimmy,  snoozing  in  front  of 
the  fire,  who  pricks  up  that  quizzical  ear! 

Dim  and  divided  as  our  councils  are,  they  do  not  by 
any  means  run  chiefly  in  channels  of  propaganda.  The 
Sea  of  Sciences  allows  me  to  perceive  that  much  as  the 
Koran  and  the  Traditions  count  for  in  true  education, 
they  are  not  enough.  Nothing  amuses  him  more  than 
to  hear  that  Omar  Khayyam  is  supposed  by  the  Firengis 
to  be  a  poet  of  some  consequence.  Omar  Khayyam,  he 
assures  me,  was  a  mathematician,  an  astronomer,  a 
philosopher,  a  lesser  Avicenna.  True,  he  wrote  a  few 
quatrains,  but  not  enough  of  them  to  be  considered  a  poet. 
Any  one  can  write  quatrains.  Moreover,  many  of  those 
ascribed  to  him  are  really  by  his  master  Avicenna,  or  others. 
And  even  Omar,  he  tells  me,  experimented  in  other  forms. 
Shall  I  give  an  example  I  came  across  not  long  afterward 
in  the  "Journal  of  the  Royal  Asiatic  Society/'  translated 
by  H.  Beveridge? 

"  Yesterday  I  jested  with  Reason. 
My  heart  wanted  some  explanations. 
I  said:    'O  fulness  of  all  knowledge, 
I  desire  to  ask  you  some  questions. 
What  is  this  life  in  the  world?' 
He  said:  'A  sleep,  or  some  dreams/ 
I  said:  '  What  is  the  result  of  it?' 
He  said:  'Headache,  and  some  griefs/ 
I  said  to  him:  'What  is  marriage?'  He  said: 
'Pleasure  for  an  hour  and  irritation  for  years/ 

253 


PERSIAN  MINIATURES 

I  said:  'What  is  the  troop  of  oppressors?' 

He  said:  'Wolves,  dogs,  and  some  jackals/ 

I  said:  'What  will  tame  this  sensual  soul?' 

He  said:  'When  it  has  got  some  buffets/ 

I  said  to  him:  'What  are  Khayyam's  writings?' 

He  said:  'Wrong  calculations  and  some  frenzies/ " 

That,  at  any  rate,  should  prove  to  a  misguided  world 
that  Fitzgerald  had  something  to  do  with  his  poet's  fame. 
Why,  as  the  Shah  said  anent  this  very  matter  to  Sir 

Mortimer  Durand,  I  myself !    Of  the  greater  poets 

named  to  me  by  the  Sea  of  Sciences,  he  evidently  thinks 
most  highly  of  Sadi  and  Firdeusi.  The  sayings  of  the 
former  are  forever  in  his  mouth,  to  point  all  morals  and 
to  adorn  all  tales.  As  for  Firdeusi,  I  learn  that  he  is  the 
true  and  only  historian  of  his  country.  On  the  authority 
of  the  Shah  Namel  do  I  hear  that  Jamshid,  and  not  the 
great-grandson  of  Noah,  was  the  actual  founder  of  Hama- 
dan,  as  of  Persepolis  and  Tus.  This  Jamshid  seems  to 
have  been  the  originator  of  pretty  nearly  everything  else 
in  Persia,  including  plaster,  baths,  tents,  seal  rings,  New 
Year's  Day,  and  the  pearl  fisheries  of  the  Persian  Gulf. 
He  reigned  seven  hundred  years  and  he  had  two  famous 
ministers,  one  of  whom  was  a  Jew  and  one  a  Greek.  The 
name  of  the  latter,  if  you  please,  was  Pythagoras.  To  him 
do  the  Persians  owe  the  sciences  of  music  and  astronomy. 
When  I  expressed  surprise  that  a  Persian  king  should  have 
unbelieving  viziers,  the  Sea  of  Sciences  reminded  me  with 
a  tolerant  smile  that  Jamshid  himself  was  an  unbeliever. 
None  the  less  did  Jamshid  hesitate  to  authorise  the  use 
of  wine,  even  in  those  irreligious  days,  until  one  of  his 
wives  was  cured  of  a  fever  by  a  sip  of  Shiraz.  But  what 
pleased  me  as  much  as  anything  was  a  wonderful  tur- 

254 


THE  SEA  OF  SCIENCES 

quoise  cup  of  Jamshid's,  found  long  ago  at  Persepolis, 
containing  a  liquor  capable  of  too  many  magic  things  for 
me  to  name. 

I  am  too  ignorant  to  know  how  widely  read  the  Sea  of 
Sciences  may  be  in  the  sacred  book  of  the  Arabs  and  in 
the  classic  poets  of  his  own  country.  But,  as  I  make  it 
out,  learning  with  him  stops  there.  Being  myself  a 
persistent  spoiler  of  paper  I  am  the  quicker  to  note  that  if 
I  were  a  Persian,  and  even  so  clever  a  one  as  Hafiz,  1 
might  have  to  wait  four  or  five  hundred  years  before 
the  Sea  of  Sciences  would  be  ready  to  take  cognisance  of 
me.  If  I  were  not  a  Persian  I  fear  he  would  never 
take  cognisance  of  me  at  all.  In  that  he  is  quite  like  a 
fellow-citizen  of  Sophocles  or  Pindar.  The  only  Europeans 
he  has  heard  anything  about  are  Alexander  the  Great, 
Pythagoras,  Plato,  and  Aristotle.  Shall  I  add  William  1 1  ? 
The  Sea  of  Sciences  seems  to  be  aware  of  the  existence  of 
some  such  personage.  But  that  vague  region  without 
the  pale  of  the  faith  means  very  little  to  him — beyond  the 
fact  that  certain  dwellers  in  it  called  Russians,  and  certain 
others  called  Englishmen,  who  seem  to  be  the  Kurds  and 
the  Lurs  of  Firengistan,  are  more  redoubtable  than  the 
rest  of  us.  He  was  stupefied  to  learn  that  an  ocean  wider 
than  Persia  rolled  between  my  corner  of  Firengistan  and 
the  Sah'b's,  and  that  I  disclaimed  any  relationship  what- 
soever with  the  mythical  William.  Yet  the  Sea  of  Sciences 
is  not  without  his  curiosities.  Several  of  them  concern 
his  pupil.  I  neither  teach  nor  trade,  as  do  most  Firengis. 
I  spend  much  of  my  time  in  front  of  a  mysterious  clicking 
mechanism  that  periodically  rings  a  bell.  Nothing 
pleases  the  Sea  of  Sciences  more  than  to  hear  that  bell  ring. 
But  why  do  I  ring  it?  Why  do  I  take  photographs? 

255 


PERSIAN  MINIATURES 

Why  do  I  separate  myself  from  my  family?  Why  do  I 
spend  long  months  in  Stambul,  and  others  in  Hamadan? 
Why  do  I  ask  so  many  questions?  There  is  evidently 
something  queer  about  a  man  who  leaves  his  own  country 
and  wanders  in  those  of  other  men. 

Nevertheless,  I  found  out,  the  Sea  of  Sciences  is  a  trav- 
eller himself.  And  what  ears  I  pricked  up  when  I  heard  it ! 
And  how  sharply  I  saw  again  the  fantastic  picture  we 
made  of  East  and  West  sitting  together  over  a  Persian 
Gospel  of  St.  John!  But  nothing  is  more  impossible  than 
to  get  out  of  the  Sea  of  Sciences  any  exact  details  of  his 
voyages.  Maps  are  to  him  unknown.  The  points  of 
the  compass  are  useful  only  in  finding  the  direction  of 
Mecca.  He  has  been  there,  it  seems,  no  less  than  three 
times.  Yet  he  does  not  wear  the  coveted  title  of  Hajji; 
for  each  one  of  the  three  pilgrimages  has  been  performed 
at  the  expense  and  on  the  account  of  another.  The  Sea 
of  Sciences  is  Mesledi  only.  Is  he  very  discreet,  I  wonder, 
or  is  he  like  a  sailor,  that  he  has  so  little  to  tell  me  about 
his  travels?  By  mere  accident  do  I  learn  that  the  waters 
of  the  Tigris  are  a  powerful  anaphrodisiac,  cooling  the 
unholy  desires  of  men  and  stopping  the  neighing  of  horses. 
Unless  used  in  moderation,  however,  they  cause  the  skin 
to  shrivel  up  and  the  drinker  to  fall  into  a  decline.  What 
seems  to  have  made  the  profoundest  impression  upon  the 
Sea  of  Sciences  are  the  electric  lights  of  Bombay.  For 
like  Sindbad  the  Sailor  he  has  sailed  out  of  Basra,  and  in 
an  English  ship  like  Conrad's  Patna  has  he,  with  other 
pilgrims  of  an  exacting  faith,  crossed  the  Indian  Ocean. 
He  is  ready  to  admit  that  the  English,  as  well  as  the 
Russians,  are  up  to  a  trick  or  two  beyond  the  Kurds  and 
the  Lurs.  But  his  adventures  have  not  kindled  in  him 

256 


THE  SEA  OF  SCIENCES 

any  sympathy  toward  those  enterprising  neighbours  of 
Persia. 

The  Sea  of  Sciences  one  day  broke  to  me  the  news  that 
he  would  have  to  discontinue  our  lessons.  An  old  lady 
had  died  and  left  in  her  will  a  provision  that  her  body  was 
to  be  buried  in  the  holy  soil  of  Kerbela.  He,  being  known 
for  an  experienced  traveller,  had  been  chosen  to  take  it 
there;  and  having  done  so  he  was  to  perform  his  fourth 
pilgrimage  to  Mecca — this  time,  again,  in  the  name  and 
for  the  credit  of  the  old  lady.  Before  he  got  ready  to 
start,  however,  the  war  had  broken  out.  Nothing  could 
have  delighted  him  more.  He  solemnly  warned  me  that 
I  would  now  see  what  would  happen.  England  and 
Russia  would  both  be  destroyed.  But  the  builders  of 
the  Baghdad  railway  might  have  been  surprised  to  hear 
him  add  the  prophecy  that  a  man  would  come  out  of  the 
East  who  would  raise  Persia  to  her  old  place  as  mistress  of 
the  world.  And  then  all  the  Christians,  he  assured  me, 
would  be  forced  to  turn  Mohammedan  or  to  leave  the 
country. 

After  all,  can  you  blame  him?  But  do  you  know?  I 
would  give  the  eyes  of  my  head  to  find  out  whether  the 
Sea  of  Sciences  really  went  to  Mecca — or  whether  he 
perhaps  took  lessons  in  German! 


257 


XVI 
WILD  BOAR 

Valentin  etait  un  saint  pretre.  L'Empereur  Claude  se  le  fit 
amener,  ei  lui  dit:  "  Pourquoi  done,  Valentin,  ne  t'acquiers-tu 
pas  noire  amitie  en  adorant  nos  dieux  et  en  renon^ant  a  tes  values 
superstitions  ?" 

Teodor  de  Wyzewa:  LA  LEGENDE  DOREE 

I  lave  heard  it  stated  that  "hunting  is  a  business  for  the  idle"; 
"but  those  who  really  understand  are  aware  that  hundreds  of  secrets 
for  the  government  of  kingdoms  are  hidden  in  this  art. 

Colonel  P.  M.  Sykes:  THE  GLORY  OF  THE  SHIA  WORLD 


IF  THE  eye  of  some  honest  Nimrod,  stranded  on  a 
desert  island  or  in  a  snoring  country  house,  with 
nothing  better  than  this  book  to  beguile  a   bore- 
some  hour,  should  brighten  at  sight  of  this  chap- 
ter     But  why  should  I,  for  my  part,  spoil  my  chapter 

by  telling  the  end  at  the  beginning,  or  hint  what  was  so 
far  from  being  the  case,  that  we  came  home  with  an  empty 
bag? 

The  head  and  front  of  that  boar  hunt  was  the  Sah'b,  who 
had  seen  a  boar  hanging  up  in  the  Bazaar  to  seduce  the 
eye  of  some  corrupt  Christian,  who  had  found  out  that  it 
came  from  the  region  of  Erzamfud,  who  made  up  a  party 
for  a  three-day  expedition  to  that  village,  who  on  the 
appointed  morning  routed  two  members  of  the  squad  out 

258 


WILD  BOAR 

of  sick-beds,  and  who  engaged  a  charvadar  and  his  mules 
to  carry  our  kit.  It  is  one  thing,  however,  to  engage  a 
cbarvadar  and  his  mules,  and  it  is  quite  another  for  a 
cbarvadar  and  his  mules  to  turn  up  at  the  promised  time. 
So  it  was  that  the  commissariat,  under  the  delighted  com- 
mand of  Habib,  failed  to  get  under  way  before  lunch. 
And  it  was  three  o'clock  of  a  short  February  afternoon 
before  the  rest  of  us  started  on  our  twenty-five-mile  ride. 
Lo,  how  lightly  I  say  it,  reader!  I  say  it  with  a  dis- 
engaged air,  as  if  to  make  you  believe  your  scribe  a  cava- 
lier born.  But  truth  compels  me  to  whisper  in  your 
ear  that  I  never  expected  to  come  back  alive  from  that 
boar  hunt:  not  because  I  expected  to  fall  like  Adonis 
under  the  tusk  of  a  boar,  but  because  I  expected  to  fall 
off  my  horse  and  break  my  neck.  For  I  had  never  ridden 
twenty-five  miles  in  my  life — or  not  since  I  was  fifteen, 
which  is  practically  the  same  thing.  However,  in  Persia 
you  either  ride  or  you  stay  at  home.  There  is  no  other 
way  to  get  about — off  the  two  or  three  highways  in  that 
whole  huge  country  which  are  fit  for  wheels.  So,  as  I 
would  rather  have  broken  my  neck  than  stay  at  home, 
I  rode  Bobby.  In  his  salad  days  Bobby  was  a  man- 
eater.  Next  to  running  away,  the  best  thing  he  did  was 
to  catch  a  groom  in  a  corner  of  a  stable  yard  and  squash 
him  against  a  wall.  But,  like  many  another  hard 
character,  Bobby  had  reformed  in  his  old  age,  hav- 
ing turned  into  quite  the  most  exemplary  horse  in  the 
world.  And  not  only  did  his  sleek  sides  give  evidence  of 
what  nourishment  must  be  in  man,  but  he  was  in  more 
than  one  way  the  most  dependable  of  his  companions. 
The  Sah'b's  horse,  for  instance,  was  a  more  debonair  little 
beast,  with  a  strain  of  Arab  in  him;  but  he  was  quite  used 

259 


PERSIAN  MINIATURES 

up  by  the  time  we  got  to  Erzamfud.  An  even  handsomer 
horse  was  the  one  ridden  by  the  Beau  Brummel  of  our 
party — a  big  black  brute  with  a  magnificent  flying  tail 
and  a  nasty  trick  of  throwing  his  head  up  where  you  could 
least  manage  him.  Another  big  horse  was  the  gray  rid- 
den by  the  Soldier.  He  was  not  a  soldier  then.  He  was 
an  Irishman,  being  part  of  the  time  an  accountant;  and 
nothing  would  have  surprised  him  more  than  to  be  told 
that  a  year  from  that  day  he  would  be  hunting  not  boar 
in  Persia  but  Boches  in  France.  And  perhaps  you  will 
not  mind  if  I  am  simple  enough  to  add  that  the  Somme  will 
always  wear  for  me  a  different  colour  because  I  knew  one 
out  of  the  many  soldiers  who  lie  upon  its  banks.  Then 
there  was — Adonis  shall  I  call  him,  the  youngest  of  our* 
crew,  whose  horse  fell  under  him  so  many  times  that 
afternoon  but  who  came  home  ungored  by  any  boar? 
And  there  was  also  Askar,  the  groom,  an  impressive- 
looking  person  with  a  purple  moustache  and  with  a  brass 
plaque,  set  in  front  of  his  black  kola,  of  which  he  was 
inordinately  vain,  who  divided  with  Beau  Brummel  the 
honour  of  knowing  the  way. 

As  it  turned  out,  neither  of  them  knew  it  too  well.  A 
country  looks  very  different  under  snow  from  what  it 
does  at  other  times,  and  we  veered  not  a  little  out  of  our 
course.  Yet  I,  for  one,  did  not  mind.  A  boar  hunt  was 
an  adventure  entirely  new  to  me,  and  I  had  been  in 
Persia  too  short  a  time  for  the  strangeness  of  it  to  have 
worn  off.  We  started  southward  into  the  easterly  foot- 
hills of  Elvend,  which  is  a  range  as  well  as  a  single  peak. 
The  road  was  first  the  familiar  one,  lined  by  bare  poplars 
and  willows  and  well  broken  out,  which  runs  from  Ham- 
adan  to  the  village  of  Fakhireh — otherwise  Boast  or 

260 


WILD  BOAR 

Glory!  After  that  we  found  ourselves  in  a  wilder  and 
more  treeless  region,  riding  up  and  up  long  slopes  of  snow 
to  another  flat-roofed  village,  on  top  of  a  hill.  I  think  1 
could  count  on  my  fingers  the  days  I  spent  in  Persia 
when  no  sun  was  to  be  seen.  This  looked  as  if  it  were 
going  to  be  one  of  those  days;  and  every  now  and  then  a 
flurry  of  snow  came  down  out  of  the  windless  gray  sky. 
There  was  something  about  it,  in  those  wide  white  spaces, 
that  for  no  particular  reason  reminded  me  of  my  first 
sight  of  the  Persian  highlands.  There  were,  at  any  rate, 
views  to  be  looked  at  from  the  top  of  that  white  hill. 

We  dropped  down  the  farther  side  into  another  valley 
of  bare  poplars.  The  village  sprawling  among  them  was 
of  a  kind  I  had  not  seen  before,  in  that  the  houses  were 
built  of  gray  stone.  Children  were  playing  on  the  flat 
roofs,  not  so  far  above  our  heads,  and  around  a  big  pool 
in  the  centre  of  a  small  square.  The  trees  stood  so  closely 
around  the  houses,  and  the  slim  lines  of  them  contrasted 
so  pleasantly  with  the  heavier  and  more  irregular  lines 
of  the  garden  walls,  and  behind  the  walls  were  so  many 
of  those  snow  humps  which  mean  a  vineyard,  that  I  at 
once  made  up  my  mind  to  go  back  to  that  village  in  the 
spring  and  rent  a  gray  stone  house  for  a  cent  a  day  and 
write  the  Great  American  Novel.  There  were  any  num- 
ber of  streams  there,  too,  gurgling  in  and  out  of  the  ice 
that  sheathed  their  borders  with  that  sound  which  is  so 
different  from  the  gay  splash  of  summer. 

The  largest  of  those  streams  was  quite  a  river,  which 
we  followed  for  a  little  time.  Presently  we  crossed  it 
by  a  viaduct  rather  like  the  knife-edged  bridge  of  Al  Sirat, 
over  which  the  faithful  pass  into  Paradise — unless  they 
plunge  into  the  Bottomless  Pit.  It  was  a  single  narrow 

261 


PERSIAN  MINIATURES 

plank,  perilously  icy,  which  I  never  would  have  dreamed 
of  trying  to  navigate  on  foot,  much  less  on  horseback,  if 
I  had  been  alone.  As  it  was  I  gave  Bobby  his  rein,  and 
over  my  ex-man-eater  marched  as  unconcernedly  as  if 
that  slippery  lath  had  been  Brooklyn  Bridge.  Such  is 
it  to  have  had  a  past,  and  to  have  wormed  your  way  out 
of  many  a  tight  corner.  A  real  tight  corner  was  a  ledge 
to  which  we  next  came.  From  Bobby's  back  it  looked 
about  three  inches  wide,  and  that  strip  of  glare  ice  slanted 
from  the  rocky  wall  on  one  side  of  it  toward  the  small 
precipice  on  the  other.  Nevertheless,  we  all  got  over 
safely  except  Adonis,  who  dashed  down  the  precipice 
with  his  nag.  But  the  drop,  luckily,  was  not  so  mortal 
as  it  sounds;  and  as  Adonis  had  the  quick  wit  to  step 
out  of  his  stirrups  as  he  went  down,  neither  of  them  got 
anything  worse  than  a  jolt. 

We  now  had  to  climb  a  gully  that  stood  up  in  front  of 
us  like  the  side  of  a  house.  The  deep  snow  of  the  trail 
had  been  so  little  broken  by  other  travellers  that  the 
horses  had  double  work.  I  can't  quite  say  that  Bobby 
took  it  like  a  bird;  but  being  a  Persian  horse  he  had  been 
badly  brought  up  to  gallop  up  hill,  and  being  an  eater  of 
hills  as  well  as  of  men  he  got  to  the  top  long  before  his 
companions.  There  I  gave  him  time  to  get  his  breath, 
while  he  gave  me  time  to  admire  the  magnificent  view. 
The  most  striking  thing  about  it  was  that  the  white 
valleys  through  which  we  had  come  were  bluer  than  the 
Mediterranean.  Even  the  plain  of  Hamadan  that 
opened  out  beyond  them  was  less  silver  than  violet, 
touched  here  and  there  by  the  stray  gold  of  a  sun  that 
was  invisible  to  us.  The  dark  masses  of  houses  in  the 
valleys,  the  vertical  lines  of  poplars,  were  all  but  lost  in 

262 


WILD  BOAR 

the  intensity  of  blue  shadow.  Above  them,  as  far  as 
we  could  see — and  one  can  see  very  far  in  that  clear  Per- 
sian air — there  was  nothing  to  break  the  long,  flowing 
lines  of  the  snowy  landscape.  The  accent  of  it  all,  on 
that  gray  day  of  snow,  was  very  different  from  the  warmth 
of  the  plain  of  Kazvin  as  I  first  looked  down  on  it  from  a 
break  of  the  Elburz  mountains;  but  the  elements  were 
really  the  same,  and  what  I  shall  always  remember  as 
most  characteristic  of  the  look  of  Persia,  made  up  of  pure 
line  and  colour.  Beautiful  as  trees  are,  and  much  as  we 
always  missed  them,  the  absence  of  them  makes  for  an 
effect  of  simplicity,  of  nobility,  not  to  be  found  in  the 
romantic  confusion  of  a  wooded  country. 

From  that  second  hill,  higher,  lonelier,  and  barer  than 
the  first,  we  slid  down  into  a  second  valley,  containing  a 
gray  stone  village  of  its  own,  called  Simin.  The  sudden 
descent  upon  them  of  five  Firengis  caused  an  immense 
commotion  in  Simin,  whose  ragged  inhabitants  crowded 
around  to  stare  at  us  in  the  dusk.  It  was  now  six  o'clock 
and  nobody  knew  just  how  far  we  still  had  to  go.  Some 
people  said  onefarsakh.  Other  people  said  twofarsakhs. 
In  our  hearts  we  thought  it  might  very  well  be  five 
farsakhs.  So  we  induced  one  of  the  inhabitants  of 
Simin  to  guide  our  guides  for  the  rest  of  the  way.  He 
forthwith  put  on  a  sleeveless  sheepskin  jacket,  mounted 
a  woolly  pony,  and  led  us  down  a  villainous  river  road 
that  was  continually  crosscut  by  gullies  of  varying  depth. 
The  unhappy  Adonis  came  another  cropper  in  one  of 
them — on  top  of  his  horse,  I  hasten  to  add — and  as  usual 
neither  horse  nor  rider  broke  a  leg,  as  might  well  enough 
have  happened. 

There  wasn't  a  sign  of  a  trail  to  us  who  didn't  know  it. 

263 


PERSIAN  MINIATURES 

Nevertheless,  the  man  from  Simin  presently  informed  us 
that  we  were  not  to  mind  the  wolf  tracks  we  saw  in  the 
snow,  as  we  were  seven  and  well  armed.  Do  you  fancy  I 
am  about  to  treat  you  to  a  tale  of  the  kind  that  came  into 
my  head  upon  the  interpretation  to  me  of  this  interesting 
news,  by  some  admired  if  anonymous  author  of  my  youth, 
describing  how  skaters  on  frozen  rivers,  or  drivers  in 
Russian  forests,  would  throw  back  coats,  hams,  or  haply 
the  least  popular  of  their  own  number,  to  delay  the  pur- 
suing pack?  Alas,  our  hams,  if  we  had  any,  were  with 
Habib  and  the  cbarvadar,  of  whom  we  had  seen  no  sign 
and  who  were  perhaps  already  eaten  up  themselves. 
And  having  been  bred  up  to  tell  the  truth  on  all  occasions 
save  when  it  will  degrade  or  incriminate  me,  I  am  obliged 
to  confess  that  nothing  more  thrilling  happened  than  a 
sudden  outburst  of  barking  from  the  dogs  of  an  all  but 
invisible  village.  We  just  made  out  its  cubic  shadow  on  a 
dim  hill  above  us.  The  man  from  Simin  advised  us  not 
to  go  any  nearer  to  it,  as  village  dogs  at  night  are  worse 
than  wolves.  But  as  he  felt  the  need  of  a  little  counsel 
with  regard  to  the  route  he  should  follow,  he  proposed  to 
engage  another  guide,  from  that  same  village!  To  that 
end  he  began  bawling  at  the  top  of  his  voice.  Where- 
upon the  dogs  barked  more  savagely  than  ever.  Then 
answering  shouts  faintly  replied  to  the  man  from  Simin, 
out  of  the  dark  hill  town,  where  not  a  light  was  to  be  seen. 
After  a  long  interchange  of  stentorian  civilities  which  I 
bitterly  regretted  not  being  able  to  understand,  it  tran- 
spired that  the  shouter  in  the  village  had  no  mind  to  guide 
the  man  from  Simin  at  so  late  and  chill  an  hour.  But 
he  gave  copious  instructions  as  to  the  whereabouts  of 
Erzamfud,  to  which  the  man  from  Simin  listened  with 

264 


WILD  BOAR 

attention.  Then  he  led  us  into  a  dark  and  devious  valley 
with  the  reassuring  remark:  "It  will  be  a  good  thing  if 
we  don't  get  lost/' 

The  rest  of  the  way  was  a  kind  of  arctic  dream.  It  was 
bitterly  cold;  and  as  we  rode  single  file  after  the  man  from 
Simin,  through  a  country  as  ghostly  and  strange  as  the 
North  Pole,  we  somehow  seemed  to  have  exhausted  those 
founts  of  conversation  which  had  been  so  lively  earlier 
in  the  day.  Beau  Brummel  and  Adonis,  to  be  sure, 
having  been  born  on  the  shores  of  the  Mediterranean, 
gave  utterance  to  their  emotions.  As  for  me,  I  was  not 
too  numb  to  note  anew  that  interesting  difference  between 
the  races  of  the  north  and  of  the  south,  which  the  former 
are  somewhat  too  quickly  given  to  construe  as  a  difference 
in  endurance.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  who  can  endure  more, 
when  it  comes  to  the  point,  than  a  vineyard  tiller  of  the 
Mediterranean?  But  he  never  loses  his  power  of  saying 
what  he  thinks  about  it,  whereas  we  perhaps  embitter 
the  sorrows  of  our  hearts  by  considering  it  bad  form  to 
give  them  voice.  What  interested  me  more,  however, 
were  certain  strange  flashes  that  occasionally  illuminated 
the  gray  clouds.  The  thing  looked  exactly  like  the  period- 
ical flare  of  Sandy  Hook,  before  Sandy  Hook  itself  is 
visible,  as  you  come  in  from  the  ocean  at  night.  But  as 
there  could  not  possibly  have  been  a  lighthouse  or  a 
search  light  nearer  than  Baku  or  Baghdad,  and  as  it 
was  not  the  time  of  year,  with  a  thermometer  somewhere 
around  zero,  for  thunder-storms,  I  suppose  that  flash 
must  have  been  from  some  stray  Aurora  Borealis — in  a 
latitude  of  Biskra,  Charleston,  and  Los  Angeles. 

As  we  stumbled  on  we  struck  into  what  was  evidently 
a  better  travelled  road  than  the  one  we  had  been  follow- 

265 


PERSIAN  MINIATURES 

ing.  Patches  of  trees  began,  too,  to  darken  the  snow,  the 
sound  of  ice-bound  water  filled  the  white  night,  the 
horses  instinctively  quickened  their  pace,  and  at  last  the 
dogs  of  Erzamfud  barked  in  front  of  us.  To  have  as 
little  to  do  with  them  as  possible,  we  made  across  a 
field  of  deep  snow  for  the  house  of  a  person  known  to  the 
Sah'b,  on  the  lower  edge  of  the  village.  How  we  found 
the  slit  of  an  alley  below  that  house  I  don't  know,  though 
I  do  know  that  we  had  some  trouble  in  attracting  the 
attention  of  our  hosts.  However,  a  shutter  presently 
opened  above  a  black  arch,  a  woman  looked  out,  a  man 
came  down  with  a  lantern,  and  we  discovered  that  we 
were  not  too  frozen  to  tumble  off  our  horses.  Then  we 
followed  the  lantern  into  the  arch,  through  a  tunnel  so 
low  that  we  had  to  stoop  to  get  through  it,  into  an  inner 
court,  and  up  some  steep,  slippery  stairs  to  a  loggia  with 
rooms  opening  out  of  three  sides  of  it.  And  we  no  longer 
considered  it  good  form  to  keep  our  sorrows  to  ourselves 
when  we  heard  that  neither  Habib  nor  our  provisions  had 
yet  turned  up.  Nor  can  I  truthfully  report  that  the  most 
poignant  part  of  our  sorrow  was  any  fear  lest  Habib,  the 
charvadar,  and  the  mules  had  been  eaten  up  by  the  wolves 
who  had  been  good  enough  to  spare  the  impure  Firengi. 

In  the  middle  of  the  room  set  apart  for  our  entertain- 
ment stood  a  big  kursi  which  did  not  a  little  to  console 
us.  I  can  assure  you  we  lost  no  time  in  getting  off  leg- 
gings and  boots  as  fast  as  numbed  fingers  could  undo 
them  and  sticking  our  legs  under  the  quilt  of  that  blessed 
kursi.  And  no  sooner  had  the  grateful  warmth  begun 
to  thaw  us  out  than  Habib  arrived  with  the  wherewithal 
for  a  magnificent  dinner.  While  he  was  getting  it  ready 
we  had  time  to  look  about.  Our  room  was,  I  suppose, 

266 


WILD  BOAR 

the  best  in  the  house,  for  it  was  of  good  size  and  it  over- 
looked the  slit  of  an  alley — by  a  shuttered  door  that 
hadn't  a  sign  of  a  rail  or  a  bar  to  keep  an  unwarned  new- 
comer from  stepping  off  into  space.  There  were  two 
other  doors,  one  leading  into  the  loggia  and  one  into 
an  inner  store-room.  Window  there  was  none.  There 
were,  however,  two  holes  in  the  roof,  whose  rafters  of 
poplar  trunks  were  black  with  soot.  Above  the  rafters  I 
could  make  out  smaller  transverse  beams,  filled  in  with 
twigs  and  camel-thorn;  and  on  top  of  the  camel-thorn, 
of  course,  lay  two  or  three  feet  of  good  thick  mud.  The 
walls  and  the  floor  were  also  of  mud,  though  there  were 
rugs  for  us  to  sit  on.  But  besides  the  kursi  and  the  fire- 
place where  Habib  squatted  at  his  sauce  pans,  there  was 
not  a  stick  of  furniture.  Our  dinner,  when  it  was  ready, 
we  ate  off  the  top  of  the  kursi.  And  good  as  that  dinner 
was,  it  had  the  special  savour  of  picnic  fare,  in  that  smoky 
mud  room  of  a  Persian  village,  which  I  would  not  have 
exchanged  for  any  Ritz  restaurant  in  Christendom. 

By  the  time  we  had  finished  dinner  and  emptied  the 
samovar  it  was  ten  o'clock,  and  we  could  scarcely  keep 
our  eyes  open.  So  some  of  us  went  to  bed  under  the 
kursi,  and  others  of  us  rolled  up  in  our  blankets,  expecting 
to  fall  instantly  into  a  stupor  which  nothing  on  earth 
could  break  till  it  was  time  to  start  out  on  the  serious  busi- 
ness of  our  expedition.  But  we  reckoned  without  our 
host,  as  the  saying  goes — or  without  the  cat  of  our  host. 
I  suspect  the  kursi  had  something  to  do  with  it,  too. 
At  any  rate,  our  dormitory  was  the  family  living  room, 
out  of  which  the  family  had  turned  in  our  favour;  and  how- 
ever politely  they  concealed  their  feelings  with  regard 
to  our  invasion,  the  family  cat  was  not  reconciled  to  the 

267 


PERSIAN  MINIATURES 

presence  of  strangers.  Having  affairs  of  her  own  in  the 
inner  room,  she  kept  going  back  and  forth  all  night  be- 
tween that  room  and  the  loggia.  The  beauty  of  this 
operation  was  that  both  doors  were  closed  and  locked. 
Being  Persian  doors,  however,  they  were  double,  though 
not  quite  so  pretty  as  the  painted  ones  from  a  palace  in 
Isfahan  which  you  may  see  in  the  Metropolitan  Museum; 
and  they  fitted  so  badly  that  by  pressing  against  the 
bottom  of  one  leaf  that  wretched  cat  could  wriggle  through, 
making  an  immense  clatter  as  she  did  so.  Every  time 
she  squeezed  in  or  out  somebody  woke  up  and  threw  a 
boot  at  random,  which  generally  hit  somebody  else's 
head.  Then  poor  Beau  Brummel,  who  was  one  of  the 
two  to  be  dragged  from  their  beds  of  pain  upon  this 
pleasure  party,  had  a  turn  and  required  succour.  At 
half-past  two,  accordingly,  we  all  sat  up  and  had  a  general 
confab,  to  say  nothing  of  another  round  of  refreshments. 
And  the  pleasantest  thing  about  it  was  to  look  out  of  the 
holes  in  the  roof  and  see  a  star  or  two  give  promise  of  a 
pleasant  day  for  the  boar  hunt. 


ii 


After  that  fantastic  night  I  don't  know  whether  we 
would  have  got  up  at  all  if  half  the  village  hadn't  followed 
the  example  of  the  cat  and  broken  in  upon  us.  They 
admired  us  while  we  performed  a  somewhat  sketchy  toilet 
and  consumed  the  far  from  sketchy  breakfast  improvised 
by  the  accomplished  Habib.  This  was  the  worse  half 
of  Erzamfud,  of  course,  and  it  constituted  the  force  of 
beaters  with  which  we,  or  all  of  us  but  the  unhappy  Beau 
Brummel,  at  last  set  forth,  under  the  most  brilliant  of 
Persian  suns,  to  track  the  wild  boar  to  his  snowy  lair. 

268 


WILD  BOAR 

The  hills  were  full  of  them,  the  villagers  swore,  and  they 
warned  us  against  killing  more  than  we  should  be  able  to 
carry  home. 

Again,  reader,  do  syllables  fall  trippingly  from  my 
tongue,  against  which  you  are  to  be  warned.  I  set  forth 
with  the  others,  it  is  true.  Like  them  I  jibbed  at  crossing 
a  river  on  a  succession  of  tree  trunks  coated  with  ice,  to 
the  vast  amazement  of  the  beaters  in  preferring  to  hop 
from  boulder  to  icy  boulder  of  the  stream.  With  them  I 
tramped  into  the  mouth  of  a  ravine  of  unbroken  snow, 
whose  crust  was  just  thick  enough  to  let  you  in  to  your 
knee  at  the  instant  the  ball  of  your  foot  was  bent  for  the 
next  step.  But  I  blush  to  confess  that  before  we  had 
gone  up  that  ravine  a  mile  I  caved.  I  caved  because  I 
had  not  yet  got  acclimated  to  the  air  of  those  high  places, 
which  makes  the  newcomer's  legs  lag  beneath  him,  which 
causes  him  to  puff  at  the  least  exertion,  which  gives  him 
cracking  headaches  when  he  least  wants  them,  and  which 
in  Erzamfud,  a  thousand  feet  or  two  above  Hamadan, 
brought  upon  me  the  faintness  that  had  lost  me  a  shoe 
in  the  pass  of  Sultan  Bulagh.  So,  in  order  not  to  hold 
the  others  up,  I  dropped  after  all  out  of  the  hunt,  and 
ploughed  shamefacedly  back  like  a  faineant  through  the 
snow  to  Erzamfud. 

I  found  Erzamfud,  such  of  it  as  had  not  gone  boar 
hunting,  squatting  half  naked  in  the  sun,  engaged  for  the 
most  part  in  the  more  intimate  pleasures  of  The  Chase. 
In  Hamadan  I  had  grown  more  or  less  used  to  seeing  bare 
legs  in  snow.  Here,  however,  there  were  no  exceptions 
whatever  to  that  simple  rule  of  life,  and  everybody  was 
more  or  less  decollete.  But  though  this  is  supposed  to 
be  the  coldest  part  of  Persia,  it  was  surprising  to  find  how 

269 


PERSIAN  MINIATURES 

comforting  the  sun  could  be.  Under  it  Erzamfud  sat 
very  picturesquely  in  its  silver  valley,  beside  its  ice-choked 
stream,  with  poplars  pricking  up  darkly  here  and  there 
against  the  snow. 

As  I  mooned  about  with  my  camera,  still  feeling  a  bit 
shaky  and  more  than  a  bit  conscious  of  my  unworthiness 
as  a  representative  of  the  huntsmen  of  Firengistan,  I 
ran  into  Beau  Brummel  and  Askar.  They  were  on  their 
way  to  pay  the  horses  a  visit,  so  I  went  along,  too.  We 
found  Bobby  and  his  friends  stowed  away  in  such  a  stable 
as  they  had  no  doubt  put  up  in  many  times  before.  It 
was  a  sort  of  cellar  without  a  crack  of  a  window  in  it,  as 
dark  and  as  hot  as  Ethiopia  and  as  aromatic  as  I  don't 
know  what.  Certainly  much  more  so  than  Araby  the 
Blest.  And  I  believe  Askar  had  breathed  that  air  all 
night.  At  any  rate,  Beau  Brummel  and  I  left  him  there, 
after  patting  certain  warm  muzzles  and  feeling  of  sundry 
pairs  of  tired  legs.  Then,  catching  sight  of  a  loom  through 
an  open  door  on  the  opposite  side  of  the  street,  we  were 
indiscreet  enough  to  poke  our  heads  through  the  door. 
Whereupon  some  ladies  who  were  weaving  at  the  loom 
promptly  threw  a  pair  of  scissors  at  us. 

I,  who  have  long  been  imbued  with  a  sense  of  the  dis- 
tress caused  to  feminine  sensibilities  in  Mohammedan 
lands  by  the  intrusion  of  man,  interpreted  the  scissors  as 
a  hostile  demonstration.  Beau  Brummel,  however,  more 
adept  than  I  in  the  dark  politics  of  the  sex,  and  an  older 
Persian  though  a  much  younger  habitue  of  this  curious 
planet,  read  the  omens  otherwise.  He  informed  me  that 
the  ladies  of  the  loom  would  be  highly  insulted  if  we  did 
not  respond  to  so  complimentary  an  overture  by  returning 
the  scissors  and  making  them  a  present  or  at  least  pat- 

270 


WILD  BOAR 

ting  their  cheeks.  And  he  forthwith  proceeded  to  con- 
form to  the  etiquette  of  the  country  after  the  latter  of  the 
two  methods  he  had  outlined  to  me.  Incidentally  he  re- 
minded me  that  it  was  St.  Valentine's  day!  But  I,  being 
no  Beau  Brummel,  and  having  a  little  change  in  my 
pocket,  concluded  that  that  might  be  more  acceptable 
as  a  tribute  from  an  elderly  intruder. 

Having  expressed  our  appreciation  of  the  handiwork 
of  these  coquettish  weavers  by  several  hawkings,  molto 
con  espressione  as  musicians  say,  of  the  words  kbaili  khub, 
which  mean  "very  good,"  we  withdrew — into  the  arms  of 
the  master  of  the  house.  "Now  we  are  in  for  it!"  thought 
I  to  myself,  seeing  more  vividly  than  ever  the  contrast 
between  our  course  of  dalliance  and  that  of  our  hardier 
companions.  But  what  we  were  in  for  was  a  seat  under  a 
kursi  in  another  part  of  the  house,  and  several  glasses 
of  not  very  inviting  looking  tea,  to  say  nothing  of  those 
hard,  bright  sweets  which  are  an  inseparable  part  of  Per- 
sian hospitality.  If  our  host  had  his  own  view  of  the 
episode  of  the  scissors,  he  kept  it  to  himself.  One  reason, 
perhaps,  was  that  Beau  Brummel  in  days  far  gone  by 
had  ordered  of  him  and  had  partly  paid  for  three  rugs, 
which  on  completing  our  host  had  sold  to  some  one  else; 
and  he  kept  asking  Beau  Brummel  in  the  most  affable 
way  in  the  world  if  Beau  Brummel  were  angry  with  him. 
He  was  a  middle-aged  gentleman  with  whom  blue  was 
evidently  the  favourite  colour.  He  wore  a  blue  turban, 
a  blue  beard,  and  blue  hands — into  both  of  which  he  took 
ours  upon  greeting  us  and  upon  bidding  us  adieu.  He 
was  a  quaint  mixture  of  the  fairy  story  and  of  the 
sonnet.  It  filled  me  with  despair  that  I  had  no 
tongue  to  ask  him  a  thousand  things  I  wanted  to  know: 

271 


PERSIAN  MINIATURES 

as,  for  instance,  exactly  how  he  dyed  the  wool  for  his 
wives'  rugs,  and  whether  his  hands  were  always  blue  or 
whether  they  and  his  beard  and  his  turban  were  sometimes 
yellow  or  green. 

When  at  last  we  succeeded  in  getting  out  from  under 
Blue  Beard's  kursi  we  went  back  to  our  own.  But  we 
found  it  so  much  less  tolerable  than  last  night,  thanks  to 
the  smudge  of  tapeb  that  warmed  it,  and  the  windowless 
room  was  so  stuffy  and  dismal  on  so  sunny  a  morning, 
that  Beau  Brummel,  out  of  his  greater  experience,  sug- 
gested a  move  to  the  roof.  There,  accordingly,  we  car- 
ried rugs,  pillows,  and  books,  and  there  was  revealed  to  me 
an  entirely  new  phase  of  Persian  life.  I  had  seen,  of 
course,  that  most  of  the  roofs  in  Persia  are  flat,  but  I  had 
not  taken  in  the  fact  that  people  live  on  them  and  even 
use  them  as  thoroughfares,  passing  from  house  to  house 
without  the  inconvenience  of  descending  into  the  muddy 
street.  The  cat  who  had  destroyed  our  night  dozed  near 
us  in  the  sun,  with  one  eye  open  for  an  indiscreet  neigh- 
bour of  a  watch-dog.  The  height  of  her  infamy  was 
that  she  wasn't  a  Persian  cat  at  all,  but  a  plain,  short- 
haired  tabby  who  might  have  been  born  anywhere.  Hens 
picked  busily  about,  and  occasionally  were  shooed  squawk- 
ing across  the  narrow  chasm  of  the  street.  Ladies  who 
were  not  too  particular  about  concealing  their  charms 
eyed  us  in  rows;  children  played  tag  from  roof  to  roof;  a 
few  men  came  to  talk  to  us.  One  of  them  was  Blue 
Beard.  Perhaps  he  wanted  to  be  sure  where  we  were. 
But  when  it  finally  became  apparent  that  no  amount  of 
shouting  could  make  us  understand  more  than  half  a 
dozen  Persian  words,  Erzamfud  left  us  to  our  own  devices. 

I  remember  it  as  a  part  of  that  Persian  picture  that 

272 


WILD  BOAR 

Beau  Brummel  told  me  about  a  windmill  belonging  to  an 
uncle  of  his,  not  a  windmill  like  the  one  at  the  factory, 
but  a  stone  one  with  arms  sweeping  just  clear  of  the 
ground,  and  how  he  once  spent  certain  early  spring  days 
on  top  of  it,  looking  out  on  the  blue  strait  between  the 
mainland  of  Asia  Minor  and  the  island  of  Mytilene,  build- 
ing fires  of  driftwood  to  keep  himself  warm,  and  reading 
books  I  had  never  associated  with  a  Beau  Brummel. 
He  told  me,  too,  about  that  blue  strait,  in  which  he  had 
often  sailed  and  of  which  the  Greek  fishermen  say  the 
crosswinds  and  crosscurrents  clash  so  fiercely  that  they 
strike  sparks.  So  will  even  the  modern  Greek  poetise 
the  phosphorescence  of  his  native  seas.  And  I  nearly  fell 
off  the  roof  for  laughing  over  a  story  Beau  Brummel  told 
me  about  a  duel  he  had  tried  to  fight  with  an  elderly 
scientist.  I  need  not  betray  to  you  the  cause  of 
that  unsuccessful  duel.  Have  duels  ever  more  than  one 
cause?  Out  of  the  cause  of  this  one  Beau  Brummel, 
who  had  yet  to  see  his  twenty-fifth  birthday,  made  me 
copy  for  a  three-volume  novel.  Who  knows?  I  might 
write  it  some  day — in  that  valley  of  stone  houses  and 
poplars  and  vineyards  and  running  water.  At  any  rate, 
Beau  Brummel  showed  me,  on  our  Persian  roof,  a  gold 
charm  with  initials  on  it  not  his  own,  and  the  mystic 
words  attendre  pour  atteindre.  And  he  said  what  few 
Anglo-Saxons  of  his  years  would  have  said,  at  least  to  so 
much  of  a  stranger  as  I,  that  there  are  times  when  one 
wants  to  get  away  from  one's  own  life,  and  that  he  liked 
Persia  because  of  its  simplicity.  I  often  thought  of  that 
afterward.  I  still  think  of  it,  when  I  hear  people  rail 
at  the  ignorance  of  the  East  and  the  peril  of  its  low  stan- 
dard of  life.  After  all,  is  it  a  low  standard  of  life  to  be 

273 


PERSIAN  MINIATURES 

content  with  a  little,  to  be  able  to  endure  much,  and 
to  know  that  happiness,  if  it  exists,  lies  not  in  things? 
However,  I  thought  then  how  many  different  kinds  of 
pec  pie  there  are  in  the  world,  and  how  good  it  is,  though 
how  disgusting  to  be  of  a  kind  subject  to  fits  instead  of 
the  kind  that  can  start  out  on  a  boar  hunt  seven  or  eight 
thousand  feet  above  the  sea  and  go  through  with  it. 
Then  the  intense  blue  of  the  sky  gradually  paled,  filmed 
over  with  an  impalpable  gray,  and  at  last  snow  began  to 
fall  again,  powdering  us  all  over  as  we  made  up  a  little 
of  the  sleep  we  had  lost  in  the  night. 

It  was  Habib  who  finally  got  us  off  the  roof,  saying 
that  the  boar  he  had  expected  to  roast  for  lunch  was  not 
yet  arrived  and  that  he  had  consequently  made  other 
things  ready  for  us.  While  we  were  eating  them,  not 
thinking  how  much  better  they  were  than  we  deserved, 
the  hunting  party  came  back — more  dead  than  alive. 
When  I  left  them  the  snow  was  up  to  our  knees.  They 
went  on  till  it  was  up  to  their  waists;  and  then,  having 
floundered  this  way  and  that  as  the  villagers  guided  them, 
those  egregious  villagers  announced  there  was  too  much 
snow  this  winter  for  hunting  and  they  would  better  come 
back  in  April  or  November.  And  it  was  at  least  some 
consolation  to  me  for  having  made  a  fool  of  myself  twice 
in  three  months  that  they  had  neither  shot  a  boar  nor  so 
much  as  seen  the  track  of  one,  though  wolf  tracks  they 
had  crossed  in  plenty. 

As  for  the  hunters,  they  were  at  first  past  consolation. 
But  after  lunch  on  top  of  the  kursi,  and  after  changing 
into  dry  clothes,  they  revived  enough  to  make  up  their 
minds  that  we  would  all  be  happier  without  the  kursi. 
Mine  host  was  vastly  surprised  at  this  fresh  manifesta- 

274 


WILD  BOAR 

tion  of  the  madness  of  the  Firengi.  However,  he  re- 
moved the  quilt  and  its  wooden  frame  from  over  the 
fire-hole  in  the  mud  floor,  carted  away  every  vestige  of 
tapeh  smouldering  therein,  and  was  perfectly  willing  to 
sell  us  all  the  poplar  wood  we  wanted  to  burn  in  the  fire- 
place. What  heat  didn't  go  up  the  chimney,  of  course, 
disappeared  through  the  two  chinks  in  the  roof  and 
through  the  cracks  of  those  famous  doors.  Still,  we 
all  felt  better  for  having  the  aroma  of  Persia  removed 
from  under  our  noses. . 

By  this  time  the  indefatigable  Sah'b  was  ready  to  put 
off  his  character  of  Nimrod  and  put  on  that  of  connoisseur 
of  rugs.  To  that  end  he  proposed  that  the  looms  of 
Erzamfud  be  inspected.  And  we  began  in  our  own  house, 
in  another  room  of  which,  downstairs,  some  women  were 
working  at  a  big  carpet  in  front  of  another  kursi.  They 
knotted  busily  away,  safely  facing  their  loom,  while  an  old 
lady  came  and  went  in  a  red-and-yellow-figured  chader, 
very  careful  to  hold  the  edges  of  it  between  her  teeth 
but  not  at  all  solicitous  about  her  bare  legs.  A  poor 
wretch  of  a  man  hovered  in  the  outskirts  of  the  com- 
pany, his  head  tied  up  in  a  dirty  white  cloth.  They 
told  us  he  had  been  kicked  in  the  jaw  by  a  horse.  A 
baby  or  two  howled  in  a  corner,  alarmed  by  the  visitors 
who  kept  crowding  in  to  stare  at  the  strangers.  We 
soon  retired  in  their  favour,  escorted  by  the  master  of 
the  house  and  by  a  mir^a  of  the  Sah'b's  who  had  oppor- 
tunely turned  up  from  Simin. 

If  you  want  to  know  what  a  Persian  village  is  like,  you 
will  see  something  by  lying  on  a  roof;  but  you  will  see 
more  by  inspecting  looms.  There  were  looms  in  nearly 
every  house  of  this  village — and  outrageous  looms  most 

275 


PERSIAN  MINIATURES 

of  them  were,  the  wooden  uprights  being  made  of  such 
crooked  tree  trunks,  and  the  cross-pieces  of  such  crooked 
branches,  that  we  did  not  wonder  at  the  crookedness  of 
some  of  the  rugs.  What  was  more  surprising  was  to 
find  how  much  straighter  certain  of  the  rugs  on  such 
looms  were  than  others  on  the  straightest  looms  of  all. 
Once  or  twice  the  Sah'b,  who  had  more  to  say  about  it 
than  you  might  think,  because  he  had  agreed  to  buy  all 
the  rugs  woven  in  Erzamfud  during  a  term  of  years, 
made  the  weavers  rip  out  I  don't  know  how  many  square 
feet  of  what  they  had  woven.  And  in  one  house  he 
pointed  out  to  me  the  difference  between  two  kinds  of 
wool  the  women  were  using.  The  weavers  were  all  women 
and  girls,  I  might  add:  never  a  man  in  this  region  stoops 
to  so  soft  a  craft,  as  they  do  in  other  provinces.  Some  of 
this  wool  was  much  duller  and  stiffer  than  the  rest,  and 
when  the  Sah'b  taxed  them  with  having  shorn  it  from  a 
dead  sheep,  they  could  not  deny  him.  One  reason  for 
these  shortcomings  might  be  that  in  Erzamfud  they  had 
not  long  been  weaving  rugs  of  any  such  size  as  many  of 
those  we  saw,  having  always  made  what  the  Persians  call 
a  do-^ar.  This,  as  I  have  already  said,  is  a  two-yard — 
though  a  iar  is  really  thirty-nine  inches.  A  two-yard, 
the  Sah'b  told  me,  costs  in  the  Bazaar  of  Hamadan  when 
it  is  new  and  not  of  too  good  a  quality  perhaps  sixteen 
tomans,  of  which  the  wool,  the  dye,  and  the  thread  for 
the  foundation  would  cost  not  less  than  twelve.  It  would 
take  a  woman  about  four  months  to  weave,  if  she  kept 
strictly  at  it,  and  for  her  four  months'  work  she  would  be 
satisfied  to  get  back  a  pittance  more  than  what  she  spent 
for  the  materials,  counting  her  time  and  her  maintenance 
in  her  own  house  as  things  hardly  to  be  paid  for. 

276 


WILD  BOAR 

Wherever  we  went  we  found  the  weavers  working  from 
A.  vagireby  a  piece  cut  out  of  an  old  rug,  and  not  from  the 
painted  patterns  they  use  in  the  factory  at  Hamadan. 
This  vandalism  scandalised  me  in  the  highest  degree; 
but  it  taught  me,  after  all,  how  common  rugs  are  in  Persia, 
and  how  little  anybody  thinks  it  necessary  to  sentimental- 
ise about  them.  I  saw  more  of  them  lying  on  the  mud 
floors  of  hovels  that  afternoon  than  hanging  on  looms. 
To  an  ignoramus  like  myself,  too,  it  was  quite  a  lesson  in 
design  to  be  told  of  the  figure  on  one  half-finished  rug 
that  it  went  by  the  name  of  the  lily  or  of  the  henna  flower, 
and  of  a  prettier  pattern  of  open  blossoms  in  a  loose  white 
lattice  that  it  was  one  of  the  oldest  designs  in  Persia, 
named  after  one  Mina  Khan.  But  who  that  Mina  Khan 
may  have  been  nobody  knows — and  least  of  all  the  gentle- 
men who  write  rug  books,  though  they  confidently  name 
him  a  ruler  of  western  Persia.  The  specialty  of  Erzamfud, 
however,  is  the  buteb,  that  decorative  little  figure  with  a 
bent  point,  so  common  on  the  shawls  of  Kerman,  which 
Europeans  call  the  pear  pattern,  the  pine  pattern,  and  a 
thousand  other  things.  Erzamfud  is  famous,  too,  for  its 
beautiful  red  dye,  which  is  a  sort  of  Aubusson  red  on  a 
lower  key.  I  was  pained  to  hear  that  the  blue  of  the  dyer 
with  the  scissors-throwing  wives  is  not  quite  so  successful. 
But  I  am  happy  to  add  that  nobody  threw  any  more 
scissors  at  us.  We  were  now  much  too  formidable  a 
party,  what  with  the  inspectors,  the  husbands  that  went 
with  the  looms,  and  odd  relatives  who  happened  in  to 
inspect  the  Firengi.  What  the  weavers  might  better  have 
thrown  at  us,  and  what  in  that  case  would  have  killed  us 
like  a  shot,  were  the  combs  with  which  they  beat  down 
their  rows  of  knots.  These  heavy  iron  tools,  which  weavers 

277 


PERSIAN  MINIATURES 

often  represent  on  their  rugs  and  which  westerners  explain 
in  the  most  fantastic  ways,  are  much  bigger  and  clumsier 
than  the  ones  used  in  Hamadan — like  most  of  the  other 
appliances  we  saw,  for  that  matter. 

All  this  was  highly  interesting  if  you  happen  to  be  in- 
terested in  rugs.  If,  like  me,  you  are  more  interested  in 
people,  there  were  things  to  see  in  the  rooms  containing 
the  looms.  They  all  had  mud  floors,  of  course,  and  rugs 
to  sit  on.  Nobody  could  afford  such  a  thing  as  a  big  car- 
pet. Most  of  them  were  also  provided  with  a  kursi,  and 
were  redolent  of  that  penetrating  odour  of  tapeh.  Many 
of  them  had  no  windows  at  all.  The  loom  would  be  set 
up,  for  the  sake  of  the  light,  in  front  of  a  door  so  low  that 
you  had  to  stoop  to  get  through  it.  And  once  inside  you 
had  to  walk  softly  lest  you  step  on  a  baby.  The  true 
place  for  a  baby,  of  course,  is  under  the  kursi;  but  babies 
have  a  shifty  way  of  not  staying  put.  When  they  do,  it 
is  sometimes  because  the  poor  little  wretches  remain  lost 
to  sight  too  long  under  the  quilt,  and  get  smothered  in  the 
Stench  of  the  tapel. 

One  loom  we  inspected  was  in  a  pitch-dark  back  room, 
reached  through  two  others.  There  two  women  were 
weaving  away  without  seeing  a  sign  of  what  they  were 
doing,  or  without  missing  a  knot.  For  our  benefit  they 
lighted  a  lamp — and  such  a  lamp!  It  was  a  blue  earthen- 
ware bowl  of  oil,  with  a  nick  at  one  end  to  keep  the  wick 
in  place,  set  in  a  handled  tray.  As  the  afternoon  drew 
on  we  saw  many  more  lamps  of  the  same  kind,  some  of 
coloured  earthenware,  some  nothing  but  a  tin  pot.  The 
best  of  them  gave  out  no  more  than  a  spark.  So  remember 
it  the  next  time  your  right-angled  Ango-Saxon  eye  is 
offended  by  some  inequality  of  design  or  colour  in  a  Per- 

278 


WILD  BOAR 

sian  rug.  With  the  matter  of  colour,  however,  Blue 
Beard  has  something  to  do,  as  he  is  not  likely  to  dye  all 
the  wool  needed  for  one  rug  in  one  water.  Tethered  to 
another  loom  we  found  a  woolly  lamb,  no  doubt  waiting 
to  make  his  contribution  to  the  masterpiece  of  the  house. 
I  don't  remember  whether  this  house  was  the  one  where 
they  had  taken  off  the  top  of  the  kursi  and  two  women 
were  making  barley  bread  over  the  tapeb  fire,  kneading 
their  dough  by  beating  it  against  the  cobblestones  that 
lined  the  fire-hole.  And  somewhere  else  a  man  sat  in  a 
pit  at  the  light  end  of  the  room  where  his  ladies  were 
weaving,  manufacturing  himself  a  narrow  strip  of  brown 
homespun  for  an  aba.  His  apparatus  was  more  like  what 
we  understand  by  a  loom.  By  pressing  a  pedal  with  his 
foot  he  worked  the  alternate  threads  of  his  warp  back 
and  forth,  while  between  them  he  threw  from  one  hand 
to  the  other  the  shuttle  carrying  the  woof. 

Outside  the  houses  looked  more  substantial  than  most 
village  houses,  because  a  good  deal  of  stone  was  set  in 
their  mud.  Few  of  them  were  more  than  one  storey  high, 
and  one  huddled  close  to  the  next  as  if  land  were  as  precious 
as  on  Manhattan  Island.  Most  of  them  had  interior 
open  spaces,  however,  which  were  more  like  barnyards 
than  city  courts.  In  one  we  saw  a  dovecote,  made  like 
everything  else  of  clay  and  full  of  the  prettiest  cooing 
inhabitants.  Almost  every  yard,  furthermore,  contained 
a  watch-dog.  There  wasn't  a  tuleb  or  a  tatf  among  them. 
They  were  all  plain  sags — and  all  perfectly  ready  to  tear 
us  limb  from  limb.  They  seemed  to  be  as  much  at  home 
on  the  roofs  as  oa  the  ground,  snarling  down  at  us  from 
the  tops  of  the  houses  in  the  most  inhospitable  manner  or 
barking  after  us  for  the  length  of  a  street  and  showing 

279 


PERSIAN  MINIATURES 

every  disposition  to  reach  down  and  nip  off  somebody's 
ear  if  they  got  half  a  chance.  They  got  none,  I  am  happy 
to  report,  though  in  the  end  they  began  to  be  reconciled 
to  our  presence  among  their  friends.  So  we  went  home 
at  last,  passing  through  a  tilted  square  with  a  big  pool  in 
it.  Women  and  children  came  and  went  about  the  pool 
with  earthenware  amphorae  on  their  shoulders,  quite  in 
the  most  approved  classic  manner.  A  less  classic  mosque 
stood  at  one  side  of  the  square,  which  we  recognised  only 
when  a  small  boy  mounted  to  one  corner  of  the  roof  and 
chanted  the  call  to  sunset  prayer.  Below  us  we  could 
just  distinguish  the  glimmer  of  the  river,  winding  away 
under  the  afterglow  between  its  bare  poplars.  They  stood 
out  the  more  darkly  because  of  the  pale  slope  beyond, 
topped  by  a  diamond  star. 

in 

On  our  second  night  in  Erzamfud  it  is  not  necessary  to 
enlarge.  It  was  a  replica  of  the  first,  minus  the  kursi. 
Even  the  cat  did  not  fail  us  with  her  devilish  performances. 
Yet  Habib,  it  is  true,  saved  us  from  monotony  by  the 
heights  to  which  he  rose  in  the  way  of  dinner.  And  the 
dinner,  after  all,  was  followed  by  a  sufficiently  historic 
event.  For  be  it  known  that  on  St.  Valentine's  Day,  1914, 
Erzamfud  saw  what  I  confidently  believe  to  have  been  its 
first  game  of  bridge,  played  by  an  Englishman,  a  French- 
man, an  Irishman,  and  an  American — wherein  the  last, 
according  to  his  wont,  was  ignominiously  routed  by  the 
forces  of  the  Entente. 

Nor  is  there  much  to  say  of  our  return  the  next  morning 
to  Hamadan.  Erzamfud  gathered  as  one  man,  not  to 
say  as  one  dog,  to  see  us  off  down  the  long  white  valley 

280 


WILD  BOAR 

of  muffled  water.  The  sky  was  covered  again,  and  so 
much  the  colour  of  the  tops  of  the  hills  that  we  could 
barely  detect  where  one  stopped  and  the  other  began. 
From  the  village  trail  we  presently  struck  into  a  well- 
travelled  road  that  led  us  home  by  the  way  we  ought  to 
have  taken  before — and  alas,  I  never  saw  again  the  name- 
less village  of  stone  houses  where  I  meant  to  write  the 
Great  American  Novel!  But  I  was  perfectly  willing  not 
to  have  to  pass  again  the  bridge  of  Al  Sirat.  Other  bridges 
we  passed  in  plenty,  several  of  them  brick  ones  with 
pointed  arches,  though  more  often  than  not  we  forded  the 
half-frozen  streams.  It  gave  me  a  pang  to  hear  that  if  we 
had  only  started  in  the  opposite  direction  we  might  have 
ended  in  Isfahan.  As  it  was,  the  highway  gave  me  a  new 
comprehension  of  the  stories  I  had  heard  about  motoring 
in  Persia.  There  were  boulders  strewing  the  middle  of  it 
and  gulches  gouged  out  of  it  which  nothing  but  a  "  tank" 
could  possibly  have  coped  with.  Mere  horses  could  no 
more  than  follow  a  trail  at  one  side — until  they  met  a 
caravan.  Most  of  the  caravans  were  mule  or  donkey 
trains.  But  several  times  we  encountered  long  strings  of 
camels,  rocking  down  to  Isfahan  by  daylight  in  this  cold 
weather.  Bobby  pretended  to  be  alarmed  by  that  ex- 
traordinary ophidian  air  of  theirs,  having  seen  a  million  or 
more  of  them  during  his  checkered  career,  and  he  jumped 
about  more  skittishly  than  became  his  years. 

After  passing  through  one  or  two  big  mud  villages,  in 
one  of  which  some  boys  were  playing  on  the  roofs  a  game 
of  ball  I  had  no  time  to  look  into,  the  country  flattened 
out  in  front  of  us.  Below  the  farther  edge  of  it  we  could 
see  the  plain  of  Hamadan,  uncannily  blue  under  the  gray 
sky.  You  would  have  thought  the  horses  recognised  it 

281 


PERSIAN  MINIATURES 

as  well  as  we — and  very  likely  they  did  better.  At  any 
rate,  there  was  no  keeping  them  together  after  that.  Each 
went  his  own  gait  in  a  thick  snow  that  soon  began  to  fall 
again.  Then,  if  ever,  was  my  best  chance  to  break  my 
neck,  for  we  soon  took  to  the  fields.  And  with  fields  criss- 
crossed by  irrigation  ditches,  and  pitted  by  the  yawning 
mouths  of  holes  that  end  in  subterranean  streams,  cross- 
country riding  in  the  land  of  the  Sun  furnishes  the  ele- 
ments of  an  exciting  sport.  It  was  the  more  exciting 
now  because  the  flurrying  snow  made  it  impossible  to  see 
where  one  was  going.  However,  Bobby  leaped  brooks 
like  a  grasshopper  and  by  the  grace  of  God  he  landed  me 
in  no  bottomless  pit  but  at  the  Khanum's  lunch  table, 
very  hot,  not  a  little  out  of  breath  after  that  long  gallop, 
and  highly  exhilarated  by  the  pleasures  of — boar  hunting. 
I  am  sorry,  Nimrod,  to  have  told  you  after  all  not  very 
much  about  the  wild  boar  of  northwestern  Iran.  But 
what  would  you?  Life  is  like  that.  Who  ever  came  home 
with  that  in  his  bag  which  he  set  out  to  get?  And  if  you 
choose  to  spell  my  title  in  a  different  way,  I  shall  not  be  the 
one  to  complain. 


282 


XVII 
VIGNETTE  OF  A  TIME  GONE  BY 

You,  sir,  I  entertain  you  for  one  of  my  hundred;  only  I  do  not 
like  the  fashion  of  your  garments:  you  will  say,  they  are  Persian 
attire;  but  let  them  he  changed. 

William  Shakespeare:  THE  TRAGEDY  OF  KING  LEAR 

HE  WAS  born  in  Italy:  I  never  asked  him  why. 
He  was  brought  up  in  France:     I  never  asked 
him  why  either,  having  skeletons  in  my  own 
closet.    And  here  he  is  in  Hamadan,  unable  to 
disguise  his  fair  hair  and  blue  eyes  of  the  north  under 
any  tall  white  lamb's  wool  cap,  drilling  gendarmes,  track- 
ing brigands,  and  otherwise  bearing  strange  testimony 
to  that  in  man  which  even  before  Europe  took  to  living 
in  trenches  would  revolt  against  delicate  days  and  a 
Christian  bed.     His  Viking  fathers  might  mount  a  beaked 
galley  and  steer  for  England  or  Normandy  or  Sicily. 
For  him  there  was  nothing  to  do,  and  for  other  young 
Swedish  officers  who  wanted  trouble,  but  to  go  out  to 
Persia. 

They  generally  found  what  they  wanted.  I  remember 
one  who,  spending  a  night  in  a  supposedly  friendly  vil- 
lage, fell  victim  to  a  feud  between  one  of  his  own  Persian 
lieutenants  and  his  host.  I  remember  another  whom, 
as  he  set  about  dynamiting  the  door  of  a  mud  castle  be- 
tween Shiraz  and  the  Gulf,  a  Kashgai  shot  from  an  upper 

283 


PERSIAN  MINIATURES 

loophole.  And  the  Major:  having  served  his  time  un- 
scathed, he  gave  my  lords  of  the  hills  one  more  chance  to 
square  accounts  by  organising  a  farewell  drive  against 
them  before  going  home  to  wed.  For  after  all  he  is  a 
human  Major,  subject  to  like  passions  as  we.  Do  I 
not  remember  a  party  when  we  started  asking  him  in- 
discreet questions?  It  came  out,  at  last,  that  he  had  just 
been  shooting  one  of  his  precious  cut-throats.  This  was 
a  gendarme  of  whom  it  had  been  discovered  that  he  was 
betraying  information  to  brigands,  letting  imprisoned 
ones  go,  and  supplying  them  with  rifles.  He  then  de- 
serted, but  was  caught  and  courtmartialled.  And  it 
fell  upon  the  unhappy  Major  to  cast  the  deciding  vote  as 
to  what  should  be  done  with  him.  At  the  word,  not  all 
the  firing-squad  pulled  their  triggers.  But  enough  of  them 
did  for  the  Major  to  come  late  to  dinner,  to  eat  next  to 
nothing,  to  refuse  to  dance  afterward,  and  to  stay  longer 
than  the  other  guests,  with  a  funny  look  in  his  gay  blue 
eyes,  saying  he  was  tired  of  talking  Persian  all  the  time. 
Of  the  house  where  he  lived  by  himself  I  knew  only 
that  there  was  nothing  in  it  but  rugs  and  a  couple  of 
orderlies  who  knew  how  to  boil  rice  and  grease  rifles. 
For  the  rest,  the  Major  was  generally  out  of  it,  collecting 
copy  for  successive  chapters  of  the  tale  of  Abbas  the  High- 
wayman, which  ran  like  a  continued  story  through  my 
year  in  Hamadan.  That  Abbas,  you  may  remember, 
was  the  individual  who  robbed  a  messenger  of  the  Bank 
of  17,000  tomans.  He  was  a  young  gentleman  of  twenty- 
four,  reputed  to  be  of  most  agreeable  manners  and  ap- 
pearance, who  owned  villages  here  and  there  and  wives  in 
every  one.  His  favourite  residence  was  not  unlike  that 
of  the  Old  Man  of  the  Mountain,  being  perched  on  a  crag 

284 


VIGNETTE  OF  A  TIME  GONE  BY 

of  Sultan  Bulagh,  surrounded  on  three  sides  by  precipices. 
To  get  him  out  of  it  was  not  simple,  without  losing  more 
men  than  the  Major  liked  to  spare.  But  every  now  and 
then  the  Major  would  pounce  on  one  of  his  more  acces- 
sible villages,  turn  it  inside  out  to  see  if  Abbas  happened 
to  be  there,  and  rase  every  one  of  its  mud  houses  to  the 
ground,  after  confiscating  valuables  and  making  a  selection 
of  wives  and  confederates  for  prison  or  the  firing-squad. 

While  the  secret  service  of  the  Young  Man  of  the 
Mountain  was  much  too  good  for  him  to  get  his  neck 
into  any  such  sling,  the  Major  made  many  a  fruitful 
haul  on  these  little  raids.  On  one  of  them  he  unearthed 
1,500  of  the  missing  tomans.  On  another,  not  having 
read  his  "Arabian  Nights"  for  nothing,  he  surprised  in  an 
AH  Baba  jar  of  pretty  blue  earthenware,  apparently  full 
of  flour,  a  powdery  person  who  knew  something  about  the 
remaining  15,500.  A  good  many  of  them,  it  appeared, 
were  to  be  looked  for  in  the  pockets  of  certain  personages 
in  Hamadan  too  lofty  for  me  to  name.  The  resourceful 
Abbas  accordingly  proposed,  through  neutral  channels, 
that  he  be  made  a  gendarme  himself  and  be  put  in  charge 
of  his  favourite  section  of  the  Russian  road!  But  he 
failed  to  keep  the  midnight  tryst  which  the  Major  agreed 
upon  for  the  discussion  of  this  ticklish  subject,  and  trans- 
ferred his  activities  to  another  part  of  the  country.  So, 
quite  by  accident,  did  that  amusing  villain  meet  his  end. 
For,  encountering  a  carriage  in  which  another  Swedish 
officer  happened  to  be  making  a  peaceful  journey,  fol- 
lowed by  no  more  than  three  gendarmes,  the  doughty 
Abbas  began  to  shoot.  The  three  gendarmes  replied  in 
kind  and  got  killed  for  their  pains.  As  for  the  Swede, 
he  drew  a  bullet,  too.  But  it  did  not  prevent  him  from 

285 


PERSIAN  MINIATURES 

whipping  out  his  revolver  in  time  to  lay  low  the  Young 
Man  of  the  Mountain  and  two  of  his  band.  And  never, 
never  will  the  Major  forgive  him  for  that  undeserved  piece 
of  luck. 

Such,  in  those  quaint  old  times,  were  the  ways  in 
which  active  young  men  found  outlet  for  their  super- 
fluous energy.  Curious  to  look  back  on,  eh?  Yet  more 
curious  is  it  to  consider  that  out  of  such  stuff  as  this 
were  concocted  half  the  books  we  used  to  read  in  that 
prehistoric  age  which  ended  in  August,  1914.  Being  my- 
self no  romancer,  but  a  sober  recorder  of  fact,  I  have  at- 
tempted to  make  no  copy  out  of  the  Major  and  his  Per- 
sian brigand.  Can  you  not  see,  though,  how  somebody 
else,  putting  in  a  petticoat  or  two  and  deflecting  one  of 
those  numerous  bullets  into  the  Major's  hide  or  dogging 
him  to  his  wedding  day,  might  have  cooked  up  a  pretty 
enough  novel  of  the  Zenda  school?  And  can  you  imagine 
anybody  reading  it — now?  How  pale  and  impossible 
most  of  them  have  automatically  become,  through  the 
simple  fact  that  after  a  long  period  of  mere  existence  the 
world  suddenly  began  to  live!  And  who  but  the  high 
lords  of  romance  like  Kipling  and  Conrad  will  be  saved 
from  the  scrap-heap  of  conventions,  subterfuges,  and 
timidities  piling  up  around  us  in  these  epic  days?  Even 
Stevenson:  how  will  he  come  off,  I  wonder?  For  adven- 
ture has  grown  poignant  since  his  time,  and  there  are 
new  tests  of  courage  and  endurance  since  that  popular 
legend  of  him  was  put  together  which  left  so  strangely 
out  of  account  the  very  human  man  behind  it.  At 
any  rate,  who  can  read  to-day  the  stories  of  sabre  and 
spur  he  fathered?  Or  those  desolating  American  novels, 
I  believe  one  called  them,  about  the  office  boy  who  made 

286 


VIGNETTE  OF  A  TIME  GONE  BY 

good,  and  the  pure  young  man  who  went  into  politics, 
and  the  naughty  young  man  who  went  lassoing  steers  or 
digging  gold?  Is  it  conceivable  that  those  creaking  inven- 
tions of  string  and  pasteboard,  those  hasards  of  wooden 
swords  and  back-drop  castles,  those  imitations  of  imita- 
tions of  imitations,  not  only  found  breathless  readers  but 
piled  up  fortunes  for  their  writers?  Done!  Finished! 
Exploded !  Or  if  not,  I  weep  for  my  race.  Any  daily  paper, 
any  number  of  the  Atlantic  Monthly,  contains  stories  ten 
times  more  thrilling — and  most  of  them  written,  mind 
you,  by  men  who  don't  know  how  to  write.  Did  those 
other  people?  Perhaps  it  was  not  their  fault,  after  all,  if 
they  were  born  too  soon,  and  had  too  little  to  humble  them, 
too  little  to  inspire.  But  what  things  the  next  genera- 
tion will  have  to  write  about — if  only  it  finds  out  how! 


287 


XVIII 
AVICENNA 

War  makes  a  people  run  through  its  phases  of  existence  fast. 
It  would  have  taken  the  Arabs  many  thousand  years  to  have  ad- 
vanced intellectually  as  far  as  they  did  in  a  single  century,  had 
they,  as  a  nation,  remained  in  profound  peace.  They  did  not 
merely  shake  off  that  dead  weight  which  clogs  the  movement  of  a 
people — its  inert  mass  of  common  people;  they  converted  that  mass 
into  a  living  force.  National  progress  is  the  sum  of  individual 
progress;  national  immobility  the  result  of  individual  quiescence. 

J.  W.  Draper:  HISTORY  OF  THE  INTELLECTUAL  DEVELOP- 
MENT OF  EUROPE 


— • , — •" 

IT   IS  perhaps  fitting  that  among  the  few  ''sights" 
of    so    ancient    a    city    as    Hamadan,    the    greater 
number    are    tombs   of    famous    people    who   have 
lived  there.     But  it  is  a  sample  of  the  capricious- 
ness  of  fame  that  the  tomb  most  frequently  pointed  out 
to  the  traveller  from  afar  is  that  of  Queen  Esther  and  her 
cousin   Mordecai — who,   if  they  ever  existed,  owe  the 
memory  of  them  that  lingers  in  a  forgetful  world  to  one 
unknown  pen,  and  to  the  accident  of  a  young  girl's  beauty. 
Whereas  Avicenna •     Well,  perhaps  genius  is  an  acci- 
dent, too,  if  a  rarer  one,  and  one  that  demands  more  of  its 
possessor.    And  beauty  is  beauty,  while  philosophy  is 

288 


AVICENNA 

merely  philosophy.  So  it  is  that  Layard,  the  excavator 
of  Nineveh,  inquired  in  vain  for  the  grave  that  now  adds 
most  honour  to  the  name  of  Ecbatana.  So  it  is  that 
Prof.  Williams  Jackson  places  it  in  quite  a  different 
quarter  of  the  town  from  the  one  where  I  was  told  to 
look  for  it.  And  so  it  is  that  I,  who  warn  you  against 
Jackson's  honestly  named  "rough  draft/*  cannot  say,  as 
he  apparently  can,  that  I  ever  set  foot  in  the  mausoleum 
of  the  Prince  of  Sages. 

This  is  not  because  I  never  saw  that  low  mud  dome 
facing  a  little  walled  garden  on  the  right  bank  of  the  river, 
as  you  go  from  Kolapa  to  the  Bazaar.  Nor  is  it  because 
I  had  any  reason  to  doubt  its  authenticity.  It  is  much 
more  certain  that  a  wise  man  named — not  Avicenna,  to 
be  sure,  but  something  like  it,  once  breathed  the  thin  air 
of  Elvend  than  that  the  beautiful  Jewess  Esther  ever  did; 
and  tradition  seems  always  to  have  marked  the  place  of 
his  burial.  Another  tradition,  indeed,  has  marked  his 
house,  in  a  wall  of  which  I  am  told  on  very  good  authority 
that  some  treatises  of  his  were  once  uncovered.  But 
when  they  said  to  me  "That  is  Avicenna's  tomb/'  they 
had  no  more  to  say  about  it.  Nor  was  I  very  much  wiser 
when  I  turned  over  the  odds  and  ends  of  books  at  my 
disposal  in  Hamadan.  Only  after  I  had  gone  away  and 
had  turned  over  other  books,  in  a  world  unknown  to 
Avicenna,  did  he  who  once  filled  the  world  with  the 
rumour  of  his  name  begin  to  become  for  me  anything  more 
than  a  name.  So  I  can  no  more  than  make  belated 
amends  for  my  ignorance  by  weaving  to  his  memory 
this  ragged  wreath. 

Know,  then,  that  this  Avicenna  was  a  Pico  della  Mir- 
andola  of  the  tenth  century,  named  Abu  Ali  al-Hosein 

289 


PERSIAN  MINIATURES 

Abdallah  ibn  Sina.  Although  accounted  the  last  and 
the  greatest  of  the  Arab  philosophers  of  the  East — a 
century  or  two  after  him  there  were  others,  you  remem- 
ber, in  the  West — he  was  really  a  Persian.  He  wrote  in 
Arabic  because  it  was  the  learned  language  of  the  time, 
just  as  the  Europeans  who  first  translated  him  wrote  in 
Latin.  His  father  was  a  native  of  Balkh  or  Belkh,  now 
in  Afghanistan  but  then  one  of  the  four  chief  cities  of  the 
great  province  of  Khorasan.  Ibn  Sina  himself,  however, 
was  born  in  980  in  a  village  near  Bokhara  where  his  father 
is  said  to  have  been  a  tax  collector.  Bokhara,  too,  was 
then  a  part  of  Persia,  and  the  lad  passed  the  greater  part 
of  his  boyhood  in  that  city. 

In  our  time,  thanks  to  the  invention  of  printing  and  the 
ease  with  which  we  get  about  the  world,  there  is  an  in- 
finity of  places  where  a  scholar  may  lay  the  foundations 
of  his  scholarship.  At  that  time,  on  the  contrary,  there 
were  very  few  cities  containing  books  and  the  society  of 
those  who  read  or  wrote  them.  But  Bokhara,  as  it  hap- 
pened, was  one  of  those  cities,  and  one  of  the  most  im- 
portant. Incredible  as  it  seems  to  us  of  the  self-satisfied 
West,  Bokhara  was  worthy  to  be  compared  with  Baghdad 
and  Constantinople  in  that  age  when  Berlin  and  Petro- 
grad  did  not  yet  exist,  when  London,  Paris,  and  Vienna 
were  humble  frontier  towns  of  which  no  stranger  had 
heard,  and  when  Cordova  was  not  quite  at  the  pitch  of 
its  preeminence.  The  day  of  Baghdad,  indeed,  had  al- 
ready begun  to  wane.  The  Caliph  Mamun,  under  whom 
and  under  whose  father  Harun  al  Rashid  Baghdad  had 
rivalled  Athens,  Rome,  Alexandria,  and  Constantinople 
as  a  focus  of  intellectual  activity,  was  a  hundred  and  fifty 
years  dead.  The  centre  of  gravity  of  the  Abbasid  caliph- 

290 


AVICENNA 

ate  had  already  shifted  to  Khorasan,  and  Bokhara  had 
become  the  seat  of  one  of  those  local  dynasties  which 
make  Persian  history  from  the  ninth  to  the  sixteenth 
centuries  a  kaleidoscope  impossible  for  any  one  but  the 
fanatic  to  follow.  Suffice  it  to  say  that  the  Samanids 
of  Bokhara  were  descended  from  another  Persian  of  Balkh, 
whose  sons  had  served  Harun  al  Rashid,  whose  grandsons 
had  established  a  kingdom  of  their  own  under  the  nominal 
suzerainty  of  the  distant  Caliphs,  and  whose  power  was 
now  threatened  by  the  constantly  increasing  pressure 
from  the  East  of  the  Turks.  They  were  great  patrons 
of  letters,  those  Samanids,  loving  to  have  about  them 
not  only  books  but  those  who  wrote  books.  I  have  read 
of  a  poet  who  lived  a  little  earlier  than  Ibn  Sina,  that  the 
Emir  of  Bokhara  treated  him  magnificently  enough  for 
him  never  to  go  out  of  the  house  without  a  train  of  two 
hundred  servants  and  four  hundred  camels!  Nuh  or 
Noah  II,  the  Samanid  under  whom  Ibn  Sina  was  born, 
was  one  of  the  last  of  his  line  and  not  quite  so  munificent 
a  friend  of  poets.  Nevertheless,  Bokhara  was  still  such  a 
place  as  a  boy  like  Ibn  Sina  would  have  chosen  to  be 
brought  up  in,  if  he  had  had  anything  to  say  about  it. 

Of  his  early  life  the  Persians  tell  the  most  fanciful 
things — which  probably  have  a  substratum  of  truth.  He 
belonged  to  a  race  which  matures  quickly,  he  lived  in 
one  of  those  periods  which  quicken  maturity,  and  he  was 
gifted  with  unusual  powers  of  mind  and  memory.  And, 
after  all,  considerable  as  was  the  enlightenment  of  the 
time,  the  schoolboy  of  his  age  had  less  to  learn  than  the 
schoolboy  of  ours.  So  it  was  that  the  future  philosopher, 
whose  family  was  presumably  not  in  the  most  exalted  cir- 
cumstances, began  at  the  age  of  five  to  take  lessons  in 

291 


PERSIAN  MINIATURES 

arithmetic  from  a  grocer  of  Bokhara — no  doubt  with 
the  help  of  an  abacus  such  as  you  may  see  in  any  Persian 
bazaar  or  Chinese  laundry.  At  ten  he  knew  all  there 
was  to  know  about  the  Indian  calculus,  as  arithmetic  was 
then  called,  being  thoroughly  grounded  as  well  in  Persian 
and  Arabic  literature  and  the  Koran.  He  was  also  well 
started  in  algebra  and  theology.  About  this  time  he  fell 
into  the  hands  of  a  wandering  physician,  apparently  a 
Nestorian,  who  laid  the  foundation  of  Ibn  Sina's  medical 
career,  besides  teaching  him  logic,  Euclid,  the  Isagoge  of 
Porphyry,  and  the  Almagest — otherwise  the  astronomy  of 
Claudius  Ptolemy.  Add  to  this  the  mysticism  which  he 
picked  up  from  one  Ismail  the  Sufi,  and  that  tincture  of 
Aristotle  without-  which  no  man  could  then  or  for  long 
afterward  count  himself  educated,  and  you  will  see  that 
the  young  Ibn  Sina  must  have  been  an  infant  prodigy  of 
the  most  pernicious  sort.  At  sixteen,  if  you  please, 
he  had  begun  to  practise  medicine  on  his  own  account,  evolv- 
ing certain  new  methods  of  treatment.  But  luckily  there 
was  in  him  a  strong  streak  of  the  human.  A  French  biog- 
rapher whom  I  have  consulted  says  that  he  was  of 
mceurs  d'eplordbles,  and  lets  it  go  at  that.  I  suppose  de- 
plorable habits  are  deplorable  habits  the  world  over,  and 
it  is  not  necessary  to  specify!  An  English  biographer 
lets  us  into  a  few  details,  dwelling  more  on  the  taste  of 
this  remarkable  young  man  for  strong  waters  than  on  his 
penchant  for  fair  persons.  The  strong  waters,  it  seems, 
he  first  experimented  with  by  way  of  keeping  awake  at  his 
work.  At  any  rate,  he  was  not  content  to  investigate 
books.  He  investigated  life  with  equal  enthusiasm. 
And  by  the  time  he  was  seventeen  there  was  very  little 
left  in  his  world  for  him  to  learn. 

292 


AVICENNA 

At  this  early  age  Ibn  Sina  made  the  beginning  of  his 
immense  reputation.  Nuh  II  was  not  the  sick  king  in 
Bokhara  about  whom  Matthew  Arnold  has  told  us,  but 
Nuh  II  fell  ill;  and  no  one  was  able  to  cure  him  save 
master  Ibn  Sina,  who  was  thereupon  given  the  run  of  the 
king's  famous  library.  And  in  it  he  discovered  that  there 
was,  after  all,  something  left  for  him  to  learn.  He  had  of 
course  read  Aristotle  long  before  that.  Everybody  did 
in  those  days,  except  in  uncivilised  places  like  London, 
Paris,  or  Vienna.  In  fact,  he  had  read  Aristotle  through, 
in  Arabic,  forty  times — without  getting  much  out  of 
him,  until  in  the  king's  library  he  found  the  Aristotelian 
commentaries  of  another  great  man  named  Farabi.  This 
Farabi  was  a  Turk  of  the  ninth  century  who  went  to 
Baghdad,  learned  Arabic,  found  a  princely  patron  who 
took  him  to  Mosul,  and  before  he  died  in  Damascus 
acquired  such  fame  as  a  philosopher  that  he  became  known 
among  the  Arabs  as  the  Second  Master,  Aristotle  being 
the  First  and  Ibn  Sina  himself  the  Third.  The  discovery 
of  this  great  man  was  accounted  by  Ibn  Sina  as  the  real 
beginning  of  his  intellectual  life,  just  as  the  discovery  of 
other  great  men  has  started  other  browsers  in  libraries  on 
their  careers.  And  so  enchanted  was  Ibn  Sina  by  his 
discovery  that  he  went  at  once  to  a  mosque,  performed  his 
ablutions,  gave  thanks  upon  his  prayer  rug — you  may  be 
perfectly  sure  that  it  was  not  a  "Bokhara"! — and  made 
an  alms  to  the  poor. 

Not  long  after  this,  when  he  was  eighteen,  Ibn  Sina 
left  Bokhara  and  returned  to  his  father's  village,  called 
by  some  Afshena  and  by  others  Harmaitin,  where  he 
prepared  to  become  a  tax  collector  himself.  Whether 
it  was  at  this  time  that  the  king's  library  caught  fire  I 

293 


PERSIAN  MINIATURES 

cannot  say.  Ibn  Sina's  enemies  accused  Ibn  Sina  of 
setting  it  on  fire  in  order  to  keep  to  himself  the  knowledge 
he  had  gained  from  it.  But  he  had  barely  begun  to  make 
use  of  that  knowledge,  by  starting  the  literary  work  which 
filled  so  much  of  the  rest  of  his  life,  when  both  he  and  his 
enemies  found  other  things  to  think  about.  In  the  first 
place  his  protector,  Nuh  II,  in  spite  of  the  famous  cure, 
died,  neither  Ibn  Sina  nor  any  one  else  having  been  able 
to  save  him.  Then  life  in  Bokhara  began  to  grow  ex- 
tremely uncomfortable  by  reason  of  certain  rude  neigh- 
bours called  Turks,  who  were  just  beginning  to  trouble 
that  polite  Persian  country  of  the  Oxus  which  the  Arabs 
had  first  troubled  three  hundred  years  before.  And  about 
1 002  Ibn  Sina's  father  died.  That,  perhaps  not  unhappily, 
put  an  end  to  tax  collecting  and  threw  our  young  Aris- 
totelian upon  his  own  resources.  So,  perforce,  he  became 
a  true  peripatetic.  His  first  step  in  the  long  series  of 
wanderings  that  ended  nearly  forty  years  later  by  the 
river  in  Hamadan  took  him  to  a  place  called  Urganj, 
or  in  Arabic  Urjensh,  ancestor  of  the  modern  Khiva. 
Here  another  local  prince,  Mamun^— of  Khwarasm? 
Khuarizm?  Vambery,  who  passed  there  for  a  native, 
spells  it  Khahrezm — held  a  court  less  lordly  than  that  of 
the  Samanids  but  one  at  which  men  of  learning  and 
letters  were  equally  welcome.  And  it  is  proof  of  the 
peculiar  estimation  in  which  such  men  were  held  at  that 
time  in  that  part  of  the  world  that  Ibn  Sina  had  not  been 
long  in  Urganj  before  his  new  protector  received  a  per- 
emptory demand  from  another  and  more  potent  sovereign 
to  the  effect  that  the  five  most  learned  members  of 
Mamun's  court  be  forthwith  despatched  to  his  own  court 
at  Ghazna,  in  Afghanistan. 

294 


AVICENNA 

This  truculent  individual  was  one  of  the  most  notable 
figures  of  that  age.  He  was  the  first,  they  say,  to  wear 
the  title  of  Sultan,  which  means  power  or  authority. 
In  letters  he  was  less  adept  than  in  arms  and  in  the  use  of 
elephants — to  which  much  of  his  success  in  battle  was 
attributed  by  the  more  polished  Persians  of  the  time. 
By  race  a  Turk,  named  Mahmud  and  appropriately 
nicknamed  the  Idol  Smasher,  he  was  at  that  moment 
engaged  in  smashing  more  than  idols,  being  intent  on 
carving  a  short-lived  empire  out  of  the  borders  of  Persia 
and  India.  In  1017  he  annexed  the  territories  of  Kha- 
rezm^  to  which  his  demand  for  the  wise  men  of  Prince 
Mamun  was  a  preliminary.  Three  of  the  wise  men, 
among  whom  was  the  historian  Al-Biruni,  consented  to 
make  the  best  of  a  bad  business  and  go  to  Ghazna.  As 
for  Ibn  Sina  and  his  fellow-philosopher  Masihi,  they  took 
not  kindly  to  the  notion  of  being  driven  into  the  service 
of  an  Idol  Smasher  and  a  Turk.  Perhaps  they  had  heard 
about  their  great  contemporary  the  poet  Firdeusi,  who 
dedicated  to  Mahmud  of  Ghazna  his  masterpiece  the 
Shah  Nameh.  This  historical  epic  occupies  in  modern 
Persian  literature  the  place  which  the  Divina  Commedia 
does  in  Italian,  being  the  first  serious  piece  of  literature 
composed  in  the  spoken  instead  of  in  the  learned  language 
of  Persia  under  the  Caliphs.  Firdeusi  finished  his  poem 
about  the  time  Ibn  Sina  left  Bokhara.  When  he  took  it 
to  Mahmud  at  Ghazna,  the  Turkish  Idol  Smasher  paid 
him  what  might  seem  to  many  poets  a  fair  price,  namely, 
20,000  dirlems,  or  some  $2,000.  We  must  remember, 
however,  that  the  writing  of  this  long  poem  had  taken  the 
best  part  of  twenty-five  years,  that  in  those  days  one 
edition  of  a  book  consisted  of  one  copy,  and  that  poets  in 

295 


PERSIAN  MINIATURES 

general  were  treated  very  much  more  handsomely  than 
they  are  now.  At  any  rate,  Firdeusi  was  so  disgusted 
by  the  Idol  Smasher's  appreciation  of  poetry  that  he 
divided  the  money  between  a  bath-man  and  a  sherbet- 
seller  and  ran  away  to  his  native  town  of  Tus.  There  he 
dedicated  his  book  anew  to  the  local  potentate,  in  a  hun- 
dred couplets  of  satire  on  Sultan  Mahmud.  The  Sipab- 
bud  accepted  the  honour,  at  the  rate  of  a  thousand  dir- 
bems  a  couplet,  and  discreetly  suppressed  the  dedication. 
And  several  years  later,  as  the  funeral  procession  of 
Firdeusi  was  passing  out  of  one  gate  of  Tus,  there 
entered  by  another  a  caravan  from  the  Idol  Smasher, 
bringing  the  dead  poet  a  belated  recompense  of  1,500,000 
dirk  ems. 

But  to  return  to  Ibn  Sina:  he  fled  from  Urganj  with  his 
associate  Masihi,  who  died  in  the  desert  before  reaching 
Merv.  From  there  Ibn  Sina  proceeded  to  Tus  and 
Nishapur,  whence  he  made  his  way  into  the  low  country 
at  the  southeastern  corner  of  the  Caspian  then  called 
Tabaristan.  There  he  found  another  patron,  in  the  town 
called  by  the  Persians  Gurgan  and  by  the  Arabs  Jurjan. 
And  there  he  began  the  Canon  of  Medicine  on  which 
chiefly  rested  his  mediaeval  fame.  The  story  goes  that 
his  success  in  curing  a  fellow-traveller  at  an  inn  was  the 
means  of  his  performing  a  more  profitable  cure  for  the 
nephew  of  still  another  petty  monarch,  one  Kabus, 
nephew  himself  of  the  discreet  Sipabbud  who  treated 
Firdeusi  so  handsomely,  of  that  Ziarid  house  which  in 
the  tenth  and  eleventh  centuries  reigned  over  Tabaristan 
and  Irak  Ajemi.  It  would  appear  that  Ibn  Sina  was  the 
father  of  Janet  and  the  Freudian  family  of  psycho-analysts, 
if  there  were  not  in  this  case  some  echo  of  an  earlier  one 

296 


AVICENNA 

involving  Erosistratus  of  Alexandria  and  one  of  the  Se- 
leucids.  For  by  keeping  his  finger  on  the  pulse  of  the 
young  prince,  while  talking  of  this  and  of  that,  Ibn  Sina 
discovered  that  the  name  of  a  certain  young  woman  pro- 
duced so  marked  a  flutter  of  the  patient's  heart  that  the 
physician  was  able  to  diagnose  the  case  and  prescribe  a 
perfect  cure.  His  fortune,  therefore,  seemed  to  be  made 
— in  spite  of  the  fact  that  the  Idol  Smasher  had  caused 
Ibn  Sina's  portrait  to  be  sent  to  the  four  quarters  of  the 
East,  with  the  order  that  whoever  discovered  the  original 
should  arrest  him  and  carry  him  to  Ghazna.  There  is 
no  hope,  I  fear,  that  after  a  thousand  years  any  of  those 
miniatures  will  turn  up  in  some  one's  album!  At  any 
rate  Kabus,  himself  a  poet  and  a  former  patron  of  Al- 
Biruni,  paid  no  attention  to  his  rival's  demand.  But, 
after  a  career  very  nearly  as  checkered  as  that  of  his  young 
physician,  he  died  or  was  assassinated  somewhere  about 
1012,  not  long  after  Ibn  Sina  had  settled  down  under  his 
roof.  And  the  rumoured  approach  of  the  terrible  Turk 
caused  our  hero  to  take  the  road  again,  this  time  in  the 
direction  of  Rei. 

The  name  of  Rei,  or  Rhages,  whose  ruins  lie  not  far 
from  Tehran,  is  now  most  familiar  to  collectors  of  Per- 
sian pottery,  to  say  nothing  of  forgers  of  the  same. 
But  in  that  time  it  was  a  great  city,  known  as  the  birth- 
place of  Harun  al  Rashid,  containing  one  of  the  most 
famous  hospitals  of  the  East.  The  fame  of  that  hospital 
was  largely  due  to  an  earlier  philosopher-physician,  and 
by  some  accounts  a  greater,  whose  name  the  Europeans 
have  twisted  into  Rhazes.  There  Ibn  Sina  found  his 
next  royal  patient  and  patron  in  the  person  of  Majd  ed 
Deuleh,  the  local  ruler,  who  was  of  the  Buyids  of  Irak 

297 


PERSIAN  MINIATURES 

and  Pars.  Ibn  Sina  had  stayed  long  enough  in.Rei  to 
write  some  thirty  of  his  treatises,  when  a  quarrel  between 
Majd  ed  Deuleh  and  his  brother  Shams  ed  Deuleh  of 
Hamadan,  and  more  particularly  the  continued  encroach- 
ments of  his  old  lete  noir  the  Turk  of  Ghazna,  caused  the 
unhappy  philosopher  to  exercise  his  philosophy  and  pack 
up  anew.  So  he  went  on  to  Kazvin,  where  he  remained 
but  a  short  time.  And  his  next  abiding  place  was  the 
one  which  was  destined  to  be  his  last — the  pleasant  town 
of  Hamadan. 

Exactly  in  what  year  Ibn  Sina  arrived  in  the  city  where 
he  now  sleeps  I  have  not  been  able  to  learn.  I  take  it  to 
have  been  somewhere  between  1015  and  1020.  He  must 
by  this  time  have  been  in  his  thirties,  or  near  them,  yet 
not  too  old  to  interest  a  patron  whom  the  chronicles  all 
too  obscurely  describe  as  a  highborn  lady.  The  high- 
born lady,  however,  soon  passed  him  over  to  the  very 
Shams  ed  Deuleh  who  had  been  concerned  in  his  leaving 
Rei,  and  who  at  that  time  was  the  prince  of  Hamadan. 
And  under  the  protection  of  this  personage  Ibn  Sina  of 
Bokhara  now  became  Vizier  of  Ecbatana.  We  accordingly 
have  more  copious  records  of  this  period  of  his  life  than 
if  he  had  been  a  mere  philosopher  or  man  of  letters. 
Whether  it  was  that  his  talents  as  an  administrator  were 
not  equal  to  his  ability  as  a  writer  and  a  leech,  I  cannot 
say.  But  the  Kurdish  and  Turkish  soldiers  of  the  Per- 
sian prince  presently  made  what  we  call  in  Hamadan  a 
slulukl,  a  row,  in  the  course  of  which  they  pillaged  the 
house  and  went  so  far  as  to  demand  the  head  of  the  ad- 
venturer from  Bokhara.  The  latter  hid  for  forty  days  in 
the  house  of  a  friendly  sheikh  until  the  prince,  falling  ill, 
caused  such  minute  search  to  be  made  for  his  Vizier- 


AVICENNA 

physician  that  Ibn  Sina  was  found  and  brought  back  to 
court  to  cure  him. 

By  that  time,  I  suppose,  if  any  heads  disappeared  they 
were  those  of  the  soldiers.  At  any  rate,  Ibn  Sina  continued 
to  be  court  physician  and  Vizier,  and  enjoyed  a  brief  season 
of  prosperity  which  ended  with  the  death  of  his  master  in 
1 02 1.  During  this  time  he  completed  the  famous  Canon 
— though  I  give  the  critic  leave  to  differ  from  me — and  he 
conceived  if  he  did  not  finish  the  almost  equally  famous 
Shi/a,  known  in  its  Latin  translation  as  Sanatio.  He  also 
wrote  many  other  treatises,  none  of  which  prevented  him 
from  leading  a  life  much  livelier  than  I  would  ever  sus- 
pected possible  in  staid  Hamadan.  By  day  he  discharged 
his  public  duties  as  Vizier,  physician,  and  arch  philosopher 
of  the  eleventh  century.  The  night  he  seems  to  have  di- 
vided between  his  writing  and  his  pleasures.  These  ap- 
pear to  have  brought  him  into  contact  with  singers, 
dancers,  wine  openers,  and  other  persons  of  a  sort  we  do 
not  habitually  associate  with  philosophy.  Yet  who  shall 
say  that  friends  of  many  kinds,  and  experiences  of  all  sorts, 
do  not  conduce  to  philosophy?  For  my  own  part,  while 
I  do  not  go  so  far  as  to  set  up  Ibn  Sina  as  a  pattern  for 
youth,  I  do  not  find  it  in  my  heart  to  cry  out  very  bitterly 
against  him  for  finding  life  quite  as  interesting  as  books. 

Precisely  what  happened  when  Shams  ed  Deuleh  died 
is  not  very  clear  from  the  accounts  I  have  read.  Ibn 
Sina  either  fell  from  power  or  resigned,  with  the  intention 
of  giving  himself  up  to  his  literary  work.  Perhaps  he  had 
by  this  time  discovered  that  it  was  invariably  his  lot  to 
find  a  patron  whose  star  was  on  the  wane;  and  one  whose 
star  was  in  the  ascendant  seemed  to  be  Abu  Jafar  Mo- 
hammed, otherwise  styled  as  Ala  ed  Deuleh,  chief  of  the 

299. 


PERSIAN  MINIATURES 

Buy  ids  reigning  in  Isfahan.  At  all  events,  he  either  made 
overtures  to  this  prince  or  was  suspected  of  doing  so  by 
the  successor  of  Shams  ed  Deuleh — from  whom  he  hid  in 
the  house  of  an  apothecary  but  who  found  him  and  shut 
him  up  in  a  fortress  somewhere  outside  of  Hamadan. 
Ibn  Sina  was  released,  however,  when  Ala  ed  Deuleh 
captured  Hamadan  in  1023  or  1024.  And  after  writing 
another  well-known  treatise  he  decamped,  with  two  slaves, 
his  brother,  and  a  person  somewhat  vaguely  sketched  as 
"a  favourite  pupil,"  to  Isfahan,  in  what  must  have  been 
the  effective  disguise  of  a  Sufi  ascetic. 

Ibn  Sina  was  now  in  middle  life,  he  had  written  most  of 
the  works  on  which  his  fame  rests,  his  reputation  was  al- 
ready spread  far  and  wide  throughout  the  extremely  in- 
telligent world  in  which  he  lived.  Isfahan  received  him 
with  all  the  honours  which  in  that  faraway  day  and  in 
that  remote  country  were  paid  to  a  talent  like  his.  A 
palace  was  put  at  his  disposal,  he  was  allowed  a  handsome 
pension,  and  he  fulfilled  for  Ala  ed  Deuleh,  on  a  larger 
scale,  the  functions  he  had  performed  for  Shams  ed  Deuleh. 
He  now  turned  his  mind  to  literature  and  philology,  to 
which  he  had  been  criticised  for  paying  too  little  attention. 
But  he  did  not  cease  to  take  interest  in  the  more  exhilarat- 
ing things  of  life;  for  this  most  successful  period  of  his 
career  was  if  anything  the  most  disordered.  A  more  curi- 
ous example  of  the  constancy  of  fate  was  that  his  life-long 
enemy,  Mahmud  of  Ghazna,  continued  to  throw  the  dust 
of  perturbation  into  the  cup  of  his  security,  as  Firdeusi 
said  of  the  same  personage,  and  once  very  nearly  succeeded 
in  capturing  both  Ibn  Sina  and  his  master.  The  Idol 
Smasher  did  capture  and  carry  off  to  Ghazna  a  quantity 
of  Ibn  Sina's  books.  And  when  the  terrible  Turk  died 

300 


AVICENNA 

in  1030  his  son  Masud  zealously  took  up  his  policy  of 
harrying  Ibn  Sina  and  with  him  all  western  Persia — until 
a  quietus  was  put  upon  him  by  those  more  terrible  Turks, 
the  Seljuks. 

Ibn  Sina,  in  the  meantime,  advanced  in  years;  and  some 
of  my  readers  will  no  doubt  be  happy  to  hear  that  he  paid 
penalties.  His  constitution,  undermined  by  his  careless 
habit  of  burning  the  candle  at  both  ends,  was  all  but  shat- 
tered by  an  attempt  which  one  of  his  slaves  made  to  poison 
him.  Nevertheless,  he  recovered  sufficiently  to  accompany 
his  royal  patron  back  to  Hamadan.  But  there,  in  the 
year  1037,  he  suffered  a  relapse  into  a  mortal  illness.  It 
is  another  trait  of  the  human  in  him  that  he  made  a  death- 
bed repentance  of  his  sins.  He  freed  his  slaves,  he  re- 
stored— give  ear,  O  followers  of  ^Esculapius! — moneys 
which  might  have  been  considered  dishonestly  gained,  he 
distributed  his  goods  among  the  poor,  and  he  caused  the 
Koran  to  be  read  continuously  aloud  to  him,  hearing  the 
whole  of  it  every  three  days.  So  he  breathed  his  last  in 
the  pleasant  month  of  June,  and  was  buried  by  that  ca- 
pricious river  whose  waters  flow  from  the  snows  of  Elvend. 

Ibn  Sina  died  just  in  time  to  escape  the  onrush  of  the 
Seljuks,  who  overran  Persia  and  Asia  Minor  in  the  middle 
of  the  eleventh  century.  But  it  is  one  of  the  ironies  of 
life  that  the  tomb  which  now  covers  his  grave  was  built 
by  a  member  of  that  Turkish  race  from  which  he  spent 
the  better  part  of  his  days  in  attempting  to  flee.  This 
was  another  high-born  lady,  the  princess  Nigar  Khanum, 
of  the  Turkoman  house  of  the  Kajars,  and  she  reared  or 
restored  that  humble  dome  in  the  year  of  grace  1877. 
Under  it  lies,  too,  I  learned  from  Prof.  Williams  Jack- 
son, a  mystic  poet  by  the  name  of  Abu  Said.  Professor 

301 


PERSIAN  MINIATURES 

Jackson  says  no  more  about  him,  however,  nor  was  the 
Sea  of  Sciences  able  to  tell  me  anything  very  definite. 
What  was  my  pleasure  then,  upon  reaching  faraway  New 
York,  which  is  now  a  greater  magazine  of  books  than 
was  ever  Bokhara  or  Alexandria,  to  learn  from  Prof. 
E.  G.  Browne  that  a  certain  Abu  Said  ibn  Abul  Khair, 
the  father  of  Sufi  verse,  was  a  contemporary  and  friend  of 
Ibn  Sina.  Professor  Browne  quotes  a  quaint  story  to 
the  effect  that  after  the  first  meeting  of  these  two  great 
men  Ibn  Sina  said:  "What  I  know,  he  sees/'  while  Abu 
Said's  remark  was:  "What  I  see,  he  knows."  Browne 
also  translates  a  couple  of  quatrains  exchanged  by  the 
famous  pair.  The  first,  which  was  Ibn  Sina's,  runs  as 
follows: 

" '  Tis  we  who  on  God's  grace  do  most  rely, 
Who  put  our  vices  and  our  virtues  by, 
For  where  thy  grace  exists,  the  undone  done 
Is  reckoned,  and  the  done  undone  thereby/' 

To  which  the  Sufi  made  response : 

"O  steeped  in  sin  and  void  of  good,  dost  try 
To  save  thyself,  and  thy  misdeeds  deny? 
Can  sins  be  cancelled,  or  neglect  made  good? 
Vainly  on  grace  divine  dost  thou  rely!" 

Professor  Browne  says  that  Abu  Said  was  born  in 
Khorasan  in  968  and  that  he  died  in  1049 — he  does  not 
say  where.  Let  us  have  it  then,  till  better  proof  be  forth- 
coming, that  those  two  forgotten  great  men  of  a  forgotten 
great  age  are  really  the  ones  who  lie  together  under  the 
humble  dome  which  the  Turkoman  princess  raised  on  the 
river  bank  of  Hamadan. 

302 


AVICENNA 

ii 

This  is  a  story,  after  all,  not  too  vivid  or  complete. 
What  we  do  not  know  about  the  Pico  della  Mirandola  of 
Persia,  with  his  so  humanly  contradictory  traits,  piques 
our  curiosity  more  than  what  we  do  know.  Yet  it  is  a 
fact  that  the  occupant  of  that  obscure  mausoleum,  who 
wrote  in  one  of  the  least  known  and  most  difficult  of  living 
tongues  and  who  never  went  out  of  Persia,  left  a  name  as 
the  Prince  of  Sages  that  for  six  hundred  years  after  his 
death  filled  the  world  with  its  rumour.  Amid  all  the  varied 
distractions  of  his  life  he  found  time  to  write  over  a  hun- 
dred books — some  very  short,  it  is  true,  but  others  very 
long.  They  covered  almost  every  branch  of  science  as  it 
was  then  known :  logic,  metaphysics,  theology,  psychology, 
philosophy,  mysticism,  medicine,  chemistry,  alchemy, 
botany,  zoology,  mathematics,  music.  The  greater  num- 
ber of  his  works  are  lost,  but  among  them  we  know  that 
there  was  an  encyclopedia  of  human  knowledge  in  twenty 
volumes.  Another  was  entitled  "On  the  Utility  and 
Advantage  of  Science,"  and  a  third  "On  Astronomical 
Observations."  He  correctly  described  the  formation  of 
mountains  and  the  process  of  petrifaction.  He  found  leis- 
ure to  catalogue  the  medicinal  plants  that  grow  on  the 
slopes  of  Elvend.  He  was  familiar  with  the  surgical  pro- 
cedure known  as  the  intubation  of  the  larynx.  The  fruit 
of  some  of  his  philological  studies  is  embodied  in  his  treatise 
"On  the  Arabic  Language  and  Its  Properties."  'He  was 
withal  a  poet,  composing  several  of  his  shorter  works  in 
rhyme.  Among  his  imaginative  writings  is  an  allegory 
called  "  Hai  ibn  Yakzan."  And  to  him  are  ascribed  on  no 
less  than  three  contemporary  authorities  many  of  the 

303 


PERSIAN  MINIATURES 

quatrains  of  his  follower  Omar  Khayyam.  One  of  them  is 
very  familiar  to  us  in  Fitzgerald's  translation: 

"Up  from  Earth's  Centre  through  the  Seventh  Gate 
I  rose,  and  on  the  Throne  of  Saturn  sate, 
And  many  a  knot  unravelled  by  the  road: 
But  not  the  Master-Knot  of  Human  Fate." 

Fitzgerald  also  translated  Jami's  narrative  poem  of 
"Salaman  and  Absal,"  the  story  of  which  was  first  written 
by  Ibn  Sina. 

If  I  really  were  to  do  my  duty  by  you,  reader  of  mine, 
and  by  this  time  either  my  friend  or  my  enemy,  I  should 
now  proceed  to  expound  to  you  in  detail  the  philosophical 
system  of  him  whom  you  know  as  Avicenna,  pointing  out 
to  you  exactly  what  he  took  from  Hippocrates  through 
Galen,  modified  by  Aristotle  and  the  Neo-Platonists, 
what  from  the  Sufis  whose  tenets  his  friend  Abu  Said 
first  crystallised  into  verse,  and  what  he  added  out  of  his 
own  curious  desire,  so  characteristic  of  the  thought  of  his 
time  and  so  like  what  Pico  della  Mirandola  attempted  four 
hundred  years  later,  to  harmonise  not  only  Plato  with 
Aristotle  but  the  general  body  of  Greek  philosophy  as  it 
came  to  him  through  the  garbled  translations  of  Baghdad 
with  the  dogmas  of  Islam.  Incidentally,  I  should  warn 
you  against  a  certain  pseudo-Aristotelian  Theology  which 
the  Arabs  accepted  as  genuine  but  which  was  really  a 
collection  of  the  Enneads  of  Plotinus,  of  the  third  or  fourth 
century.  I  should  then  explain  the  Oriental  theory  of 
Emanation,  dwelling  on  Ibn  Sina's  favourite  idea  that  the 
body  is  the  tool  of  the  soul.  To  this  exposition  I  should 
add  an  abstract  of  the  Canon  and  the  Sanatio,  which  were 
the  basis  of  mediaeval  medicine.  Nor  should  I  fail  to 

304 


AVICENNA 

analyse  Ibn  Sina's  division  of  learning  into  the  speculative 
and  practical  sciences,  followed  in  all  the  European  uni- 
versities until  the  seventeenth  century,  or  to  state  that 
his  aim  was  not  to  teach  truth  but  to  preserve  from  error. 
And  having  done  so  it  would  behoove  me  to  assign  him  his 
true  place  in  the  hierarchy  of  philosophy,  as  well  as  to 
estimate  the  literary  qualities  of  this  author  of  over  a 
hundred  books. 

If  you  are  that  kind  of  a  reader,  however,  you  will  not 
read  this  kind  of  a  book.  And  I  shall  not  be  so  foolish  as 
to  attempt  to  disguise  from  you  the  fact  that  I  have  never 
read  Avicenna  or  his  master  Aristotle,  and  never  shall. 
There  was  a  time,  indeed,  when  such  literature  had  for  me 
a  fantastic  interest.  That  was  the  time  when  I  began  to 
discover  that  religion,  after  all,  does  not  explain  all  one 
would  like  to  know  about  this  cruel  and  comforting  world 
— neither  my  religion  nor  the  other  religions  of  which  I 
vaguely  took  cognisance.  And  I  was  young  enough  to 
imagine  that  the  philosophers  had  been  more  successful 
than  the  priests  in  unravelling  "the  master-knot  of  human 
fate/'  But  by  the  time  I  found  out  that  all  they  could 
do  was  to  formulate  rather  more  clearly  and  elaborately 
than  myself  what  we  can  know  and  what  we  cannot  know, 
I  began  to  recognise  that  the  tendency  of  my  own  mind — 
if  I  may  so  dignify  that  chaos  of  instincts  and  impulses — 
ran  to  the  concrete  rather  than  to  the  abstract,  and  that 
there  was  quite  enough  in  the  appearances  of  life  to 
keep  one  honest  and  busy  without  waiting  to  solve  the 
origin  or  the  end  of  life. 

This  is  no  doubt  a  debasing  confession  to  make;  but 
what  can  I  do?  I  am  made  like  that.  And  nothing  in- 
terests or  imposes  me  less  than  a  formal  system  of  any 


PERSIAN  MINIATURES 

kind.  For  I  cannot  make  myself  believe  that  the  system 
ever  has  been  or  ever  will  be  devised  which  will  not  sooner 
or  later  be  upset.  What  does  interest  me  is  the  human 
and  personal  in  it  all,  the  eternal  struggle  of  men  to  under- 
stand, to  learn,  to  perfect.  As  a  man,  therefore,  as  a 
friend  of  princes,  mystics,  and  dancers,  as  a  personality 
so  vital  and  so  curious  of  life  that  he  filled  his  life  to  the 
brim  with  toil  and  play,  and  made  for  himself  one  of  the 
greatest  names  in  a  time  not  one  of  the  least,  Avicenna 
interests  me  extraordinarily.  They  say,  indeed,  that  he 
does  not  deserve  his  immense  reputation:  that  as  an 
Aristotelian  he  is  inferior  to  his  predecessor  Farabi  and 
to  his  successor  Averroes;  that  in  medicine  he  was  sur- 
passed by  Rhazes  of  Rei.  And  who  knows?  It  is  often 
an  accident  that  lifts  one  man  into  fame  above  another— 
an  accident  of  birth,  of  time,  of  place,  of  style,  of  method, 
of  something  so  little  a  part  of  him  as  the  friends  he  hap- 
pened to  make.  Yet  however  Avicenna  acquired  so  im- 
mense a  fame,  the  fact  remains  that  he  acquired  it.  And 
that  humble  tomb  of  his  in  Hamadan  is  a  monument  to 
one  of  the  strangest  incidents  in  the  history  of  human 
thought,  whereby  a  Persian  of  Bokhara  absorbed  so  much 
of  the  learning  of  Greece  that  he  was  able  to  pass  it  on  to 
Europe  at  the  moment  when  Europe  began  to  stir  out  of 
the  ignorance  and  degradation  into  which  our  ancestors 
had  sunk. 

One  of  the  strongest  incentives  to  the  reading  of  history 
is  that  curious  rhythm  of  history  which  sets  one  race  up 
and  pulls  another  down,  the  repeated  shifting  of  the  centre 
of  gravity  of  civilisation.  A  case  in  point  is  that  of  the 
city  of  Bokhara,  now  a  ruinous  provincial  town  of  Turks, 
or  men  of  Turkish  origin,  to  attempt  to  visit  which  is  an 

306 


AVICENNA 

adventure  comparable  to  exploring  the  forests  of  Africa. 
Yet  Bokhara  was  a  notable  centre  of  learning  when  London 
and  Paris  were  unknown  villages,  and  in  it  Avicenna  was 
able  to  study  Greek  philosophy  when  Greece  itself  was 
lost  in  darkness.  These  are  times  when  we  see  more 
vividly  than  in  times  of  peace  how  such  things  may  come 
about.  We  who  are  of  European  origin,  however,  are  so 
accustomed  to  saying  "We  are  the  people,  and  wisdom 
shall  die  with  us,"  we  find  it  so  hard  to  take  seriously  the 
civilisations  of  the  East,  and  so  many  barriers  of  time, 
space,  race,  language,  and  religion  shut  us  off  from  the 
period  in  which  our  own  civilisation  was  in  the  making, 
that  the  case  of  Avicenna  seems  all  the  more  extraordinary. 
And  we  incline  too  much  to  forget  how  it  was  that  the 
Hellenism  which  was  the  foundation  alike  of  modern 
culture  and  of  kultur  was  driven  into  the  East,  how  the 
Arabs  had  a  part  in  saving  it  from  destruction,  and  how 
through  Spain  they  communicated  it  to  the  barbarous 
countries  of  the  West. 

Athens,  of  course,  was  the  first  capital  of  civilisation  in 
Europe,  the  great  missionary  to  the  dark  continent  behind 
it.  How  many  centuries  it  cost  the  Greeks  to  store  up 
their  treasure  of  Hellenism  we  may  never  know;  but  we 
do  know  that  the  work  of  those  who  handed  it  down  to 
us  was  done  in  the  short  two  hundred  years  between  the 
Persian  Wars  and  the  wars  of  Alexander  the  Great. 
With  the  single  exception  of  Homer,  who  is  supposed  to 
have  lived  anywhere  from  1,100  to  800  B.C.,  the  philoso- 
phers, the  dramatists,  the  poets,  and  the  sculptors  of  the 
Golden  Age  flourished  between  the  sixth  and  the  fourth 
centuries.  The  capital  of  the  Hellenic  world  then  shifted 
to  the  continent  from  which  Greece  derived  its  earliest 

307 


PERSIAN  MINIATURES 

inspiration,  and  under  the  Ptolemies  Alexandria  became 
the  centre  of  learning  and  art  in  the  West.  Thither  were 
transported  from  the  archives  of  Athens  the  originals  of 
the  great  dramatists,  together  with  all  the  other  manu- 
scripts that  could  be  collected.  So  zealous  indeed  were 
the  Alexandrians  in  the  accumulation  of  books  that  no 
visitor  was  allowed  to  go  away  from  the  city  without  leav- 
ing a  copy  of  any  manuscript  which  he  might  possess; 
and  when  Attalus  of  Pergamum  set  about  assembling  a 
library  of  his  own  in  241  B.C.,  Ptolemy  Epiphanes  forth- 
with prohibited  the  export  of  Egyptian  papyrus,  upon 
which  all  the  books  of  the  time  were  written.  This  did 
not  prevent  the  Pergamenes  from  inventing  that  substi- 
tute for  papyrus  whose  name  of  parchment  is  derived 
from  their  own.  But  their  library  of  200,000  volumes  was 
destined  to  enrich  the  Alexandrians  after  all,  thanks  to 
Julius  Qesar,  who  presented  it  to  the  latter  in  partial 
reparation  for  the  burning  by  his  legionaries  of  the 
Brouchion  and  its  books.  Papyri,  however,  were  not  all 
that  Alexandria  could  boast.  The  school  of  the  Neo- 
Platonists  carried  on  the  tradition  of  the  Greek  philoso- 
phers, while  the  Museum  of  Ptolemy  Philadelphus  became 
a  pioneer  centre  of  scientific  research.  There  the  dis- 
section of  the  human  body  was  first  practised,  and  there 
did  western  astronomers  first  measure  a  meridian  of  the 
earth.  Nor  did  the  hostility  of  the  seventh  Ptolemy  to- 
ward men  of  learning  suffice  to  destroy  the  leadership  of 
Alexandria  among  the  Greek  cities. 

With  the  rise  of  Rome  into  an  imperial  power,  toward 
the  beginning  of  our  era,  a  capital  of  a  new  kind  grew  up 
in  the  Mediterranean.  Alexandria  and  Athens  continued 
to  be  frequented  by  scholars  and  lovers  of  the  arts.  But 

308 


AVICENNA 

r 

the  political  hegemony  of  Rome  naturally  attracted  so 
much  wealth  and  wit  that  the  Italian  city  might  have 
become  the  intellectual  capital  of  the  empire  in  a  pro- 
founder  sense  than  it  did,  had  it  not  been  for  certain  un- 
foreseen circumstances.  These  were  the  spread  of  Chris- 
tianity, the  inroads  of  the  barbarians,  and  the  transfer 
of  the  seat  of  government  to  the  East.  Constantinople 
accordingly  became  in  turn  the  true  capital  of  Greco- 
Roman  civilisation.  And  Constantinople  enjoyed  a  far 
longer  period  of  preeminence,  thus  not  only  preserving  on 
Greek  ground  a  remnant  of  the  precious  heritage  of  Athens 
but  developing  potent  arts  of  its  own. 

At  the  same  time  there  is  no  denying  that  between  the 
old  order  and  the  new  antagonisms  arose  which  were  little 
less  formidable  than  the  Goths  and  the  Huns.  Two  ele- 
ments in  early  Christianity  were  particularly  fatal  to  the 
achievements  of  the  older  time.  One  of  these,  indeed, 
lay  in  the  Greek  spirit  itself,  namely,  that  intellectual 
quickness,  that  desire  of  definition,  which  out  of  a  simple 
and  humane  creed  brought  forth  an  infinity  of  warring 
sects  and  ended  in  an  irreconcilable  breach  between  the 
churches  of  East  and  West.  And  this,  together  with 
differences  of  language  and  difficulties  of  communication, 
cut  off  our  own  ancestors  from  the  benefits  of  the  civilisa- 
tion that  grew  up  in  eastern  Europe.  The  other  element 
of  peril  was  the  new  Christian  spirit  of  democracy.  This 
is  not  the  time,  nor  am  I  of  the  race,  to  cry  out  against 
democracy!  But  I  may  say  that  between  democracy  and 
autocracy  lies  a  hair  line  which  is  not  easy  to  draw. 
Of  this  fact  recent  events  in  Russia  are  the  best  possible 
witness.  For  a  literal  democracy  is  of  course  an  impossible 
state  of  society.  No  man  is  born  free  of  his  circumstances 

309 


PERSIAN  MINIATURES 

or  of  obligations  to  his  fellowmen,  nor  can  all  men  be 
born  equal  in  ability  and  opportunity.  In  any  concerted 
effort,  moreover,  some  one  must  lead.  Otherwise  the 
effort  is  bound  to  fail.  The  attempt  of  democracy  is  to 
find  the  man  best  fitted  to  lead,  to  give  him  his  chance, 
and  to  prevent  him  from  abusing  it.  In  outward  form, 
therefore,  democracy  and  autocracy  must  necessarily  re- 
semble each  other.  The  difference  is  that  the  democratic 
leader  is  obeyed  because  he  is  the  delegate  of  the  mass, 
not  because  he  is  the  master  of  the  mass. 

Any  new  state  of  freedom,  however,  naturally  produces 
a  confusion  of  aims  and  personalities  which  does  not 
subside  until  events  give  them  their  proper  level.  What 
was  unfortunate  for  the  world  in  the  coming  of  Christian- 
ity was  that  the  new  freedom  put  the  most  ignorant  and 
bigotted  peasant  not  on  a  par  with  the  greatest  prince  or 
the  most  enlightened  philosopher,  but  above  him — if 
that  prince  or  that  philosopher  did  not  chance  to  be  of 
the  new  religion.  And  it  happens  to  be  a  trait  of  the  most 
educated  minds  that  they  do  not,  in  general,  show  the 
most  enthusiasm  for  movements  of  an  emotional  rather 
than  of  an  intellectual  kind.  The  consequences  for  the 
old  Greek  learning  were  therefore  of  the  most  disastrous. 
For  so  general  a  zeal  for  the  new  religion  made  it  a  credit- 
able thing  to  do  away  with  the  symbols  of  the  old.  We 
shall  never  know  how  many  priceless  works  of  art,  how 
many  manuscripts  for  which  we  would  now  pay  untold 
sums,  were  wilfully  destroyed  with  the  best  intentions  in 
the  world.  So  did  it  come  about  that  a  pious  monk  would 
erase  a  play  of  /Eschylus,  a  poem  of  Pindar,  or  a  treatise 
of  Plato,  in  order  to  have  room  to  inscribe  his  views  of 
the  nature  of  the  Trinity.  And  there  grew  up  that  dreary 

310 


AVICENNA 

patristic  literature  which  was  the  one  literary  achievement 
of  the  time,  and  which  now  rests  undisturbed  in  its  dust. 
Constantine  himself  set  an  unfortunate  example  when 
he  abolished  the  Greek  Asclepieia,  not  so  much  temples 
as  hospitals,  in  which  the  tradition  of  Hippocrates  had 
been  preserved.  More  pitiless  enemies  of  the  old  learning 
were  the  emperors  Theodosius  I  and  II,  under  whom  the 
zeal  of  the  church  reached  such  a  pitch  that  Theophilus, 
Bishop  of  Alexandria,  caused  the  books  and  the  scientific 
instruments  of  the  Museum  and  the  Serapeion  to  be 
destroyed.  The  appliances  of  Hero  and  Archimedes 
were  regarded  as  the  tools  of  some  dark  magic  by  the  very 
men  who  believed  relics  to  possess  supernatural  power. 
Clement  of  Alexandria  fulminated  against  the  horrible 
practise  of  maintaining  private  baths — out  of  which 
tradition  it  grew  that  the  Crusaders  were  looked  upon  by 
the  Byzantines  and  the  Saracens  alike  as  the  filthiest  and 
most  barbarous  of  men.  St.  Augustine,  first  among  the 
four  great  fathers  of  the  church,  a  propos  of  the  correct 
Alexandrian  theory  of  the  globe,  pronounced  it  impossible 
that  the  opposite  side  of  the  earth  could  be  inhabited, 
since  the  Bible  mentioned  no  such  people  among  the 
descendants  of  Adam.  Under  Cyril,  successor  of  Theo- 
philus in  the  see  of  Alexandria,  the  gifted  Hypatia,  who 
represented  in  the  fifth  century  the  culture  and  elegance 
of  the  older  time,  was  mobbed,  stripped,  and  stabbed  to 
death  in  the  city  of  the  Ptolemies.  And  even  so  enlight- 
ened a  sovereign  as  Justinian  the  Great,  himself  of  humble 
origin,  having  been  born  in  Bulgaria  of  what  may  have 
been  Albanian  stock,  finally  closed  the  schools  of  Athens 
and  Alexandria  and  drove  their  inmates  to  take  refuge 
in  the  more  tolerant  East. 


PERSIAN  MINIATURES 

Now  it  happened  that  this  took  place  shortly  before 
another  abrupt  change  in  the  Mediterranean  world — the 
rise  of  the  Arabs.  But  the  Hellenisation  of  the  East— 
to  use  a  word  which  must  be  applied  with  discretion- 
was  by  no  means  the  work  of  Justinian  alone.  As  early 
as  the  sixth  century  B.  C.  Greece  and  Persia  had  come 
into  contact  through  the  wars  between  Media  and  Lydia. 
The  greater  wars  of  Cyrus,  Darius,  and  Xerxes  in  the  fol- 
lowing century  had  renewed  and  broadened  this  contact, 
which  is  reflected  in  the  architecture  of  Persepolis.  And 
the  wars  of  Alexander  and  his  successors  carried  the  Hel- 
lenic influence  as  far  as  Bactria,  in  the  region  of  Bokhara, 
and  India,  founding  Greek  cities  all  the  way  from  Antioch 
in  Syria  and  Seleucia  on  the  Tigris  to  Merv  in  Khorasan, 
and  beyond.  And  from  the  third  century  B.  C.  until  the 
appearance  of  the  Arabs  in  the  seventh  century  A.  D. 
the  Parthian  and  Sasanian  kings  of  Persia  were  constantly 
in  relation,  hostile  or  otherwise,  with  their  Hellenised 
neighbours  of  Syria  and  Asia  Minor  or  with  the  Roman 
emperors.  During  this  thousand  years  the  Persians 
several  times  extended  their  borders  to  the  Black  Sea  or 
the  Mediterranean,  while  the  Romans  reached  the  Per- 
sian Gulf  and  long  maintained  the  Euphrates  as  their 
eastern  frontier.  I  need  not  repeat  here  the  history  of 
this  confused  period.  But  it  is  interesting  to  recall  that 
at  the  battle  of  Carrhae,  in  Mesopotamia,  in  53  B.  C., 
10,000  Roman  soldiers- were  captured  by  the  Parthians 
and  deported  to  Merv;  that  the  battle  where  Caesar  came, 
saw,  and  conquered  took  place  at  the  modern  Turkish 
town  of  Zilleh,  near  Sivas  and  not  so  far  from  the  upper 
Euphrates;  that  an  older  brother  of  Shapur  the  Great  was 
disinherited  because  of  his  Hellenistic  leanings  and  took 

312 


AVICENNA 

refuge  with  Constantine  the  Great,  who  afterward  wrote 
to  the  Sasanian  king  with  regard  to  the  status  of  Chris- 
tians in  Persia;  that  Julian  the  Apostate  lost  his  life  while 
fighting  against  the  Persians  on  the  Tigris  in  363;  that  in 
489  when  Zeno  closed  the  schools  of  Edessa,  the  modern 
Urfa,  they  were  immediately  reopened  at  Nisibis;  that 
when  Justinian  in  turn  closed  the  schools  of  Athens  in 
529,  five  Greek  philosophers  found  asylum  with  Nushir- 
van  in  Persia,  and  at  his  request  translated  Plato  and 
Aristotle  into  Persian.  This  was  the  Sasanian  king  who 
founded  or  enlarged  the  school  of  Gand-i-Shapur — Junda- 
i-Sabur,  in  its  Arabicised  form,  identified  by  Le  Strange 
with  the  modern  village  of  Shahabad  between  Shuster 
and  Dizful — which  was  perhaps  the  one  provided  with 
Greek  physicians  by  the  emperor  Aurelian  and  which, 
under  Jewish  and  Nestorian  teachers,  became  a  celebrated 
centre  of  philosophical  and  medical  study,  at  a  time  when 
such  studies  were  despised  in  Europe. 

The  Nestorians,  indeed,  played  a  part  in  bringing  to- 
gether the  East  and  the  West  which  has  almost  been  for- 
gotten. The  seacoast  of  Asia  Minor  had  been  Hellen- 
ised  from  great  antiquity.  But  after  the  conquests  of 
Alexander  and  the  disruption  of  the  Jewish  kingdoms 
Syria  was  not  slow  to  feel  the  Greek  influence.  Antioch 
in  particular  rose  into  prominence  as  another  centre  of 
learning,  which  contributed  both  to  the  Neo-Platonic  and 
to  the  patristic  literature.  It  was  there,  in  fact,  that  the 
name  of  Christian  first  came  into  use,  and  there  did  St. 
Simeon  Stylites  stand  on  his  uncomfortable  pillar.  The 
isolation  of  Antioch  from  the  West,  however,  and  its 
relative  proximity  to  Persia,  naturally  enough  brought 
about  a  distinction  between  the  Christians  of  Asia  and 

313 


PERSIAN  MINIATURES 

their  European  brothers.  The  Syrian  Christians  had 
churches  as  far  East  as  Tus  and  Merv  in  334.  In  409 
they  were  officially  recognised  by  Yezdigird  I,  the  Sasan- 
ian  king  of  Persia;  and  in  410  the  Council  of  Seleucia, 
twin  city  of  Ctesiphon,  showed  how  far  the  East  was 
from  the  West  by  approving  the  famous  Council  of 
Nicaea,  held  almost  a  hundred  years  earlier.  This 
separation  became  a  schism  in  431,  when  the  Council  of 
Ephesus  condemned  Nestorius,  Syrian  Bishop  of  Con- 
stantinople, and  his  followers  for  their  heretical  views  of 
the  supernatural  birth  of  Christ.  And  the  closing  of  the 
schools  of  Edessa  by  the  emperor  Zeno  prepared  the  final 
break  between  the  Greeks  and  the  Nestorians.  Never- 
theless the  latter  continued  to  be  the  representatives  in 
the  East  of  the  Hellenic  culture.  The  fact  that  they  were 
accounted  heretics  perhaps  encouraged  them  to  trans- 
late into  Syriac  the  philosophers  of  Athens  and  Alexandria. 
At  the  same  time  their  missionaries  pushed  on  into  Asia. 
By  the  year  500  Samarkand  was  a  Nestorian  bishopric, 
and  the  first  Nestorians  arrived  in  China  in  635,  a  few 
years  after  the  first  Mohammedans.  There  exists  in 
China  to-day  a  monument  which  in  1907  was  still  stand- 
ing in  Hsi-ang-fu  or  Chang-an,  capital  of  the  T'ang  dy- 
nasty, recording  their  presence  there  in  781.  In  845 
they,  like  the  Mohammedans,  were  affected  by  a  decree 
closing  the  Buddhist  monasteries.  And  in  the  farther 
East  they  ultimately  became  merged  with  the  followers  of 
other  sects,  cut  off  as  they  were  from  their  own  country 
by  the  triumph  of  Islam  and  the  disturbances  caused  in 
Central  Asia  by  the  Turks.  Many  Turks,  nevertheless, 
were  converted  by  Nestorians  before  falling  under  the 
influence  of  the  Arabs.  Prester  John,  about  whom  Marco 


AVICENNA 

Polo  and  the  Crusaders  spread  so  many  legends,  was  a 
Nestorian  Turkish  chief  of  Central  Asia.  In  Transoxiana, 
Persia,  and  Syria  the  Nestorians  long  continued  to  flour- 
ish and  to  keep  alive  a  remnant  of  Greek  civilisation. 
Their  patriarchs  reigned  at  Seleucia-Ctesiphon  from  496 
to  762,  removing  under  the  Abbasid  Caliphs  to  Baghdad. 
And  when  that  city  was  destroyed  in  1258  by  the  Mon- 
golian Hulagu,  he,  out  of  deference  to  his  Christian  wife, 
a  Kerait  Turkish  princess  of  the  same  tribe  as  the  mythical 
Prester  John,  spared  the  life  of  the  Nestorian  Patriarch — 
whose  successors  and  whose  flock  were  only  dispersed 
in  the  fourteenth  century  by  the  conquests  of  Timur. 

Thus  was  the  ground  prepared  for  that  astonishing 
Saracen  renaissance  of  which  Avicennawas  one  of  the  most 
important  figures.  When  the  Arabs  emerged  in  the 
seventh  century  from  their  all  but  unknown  peninsula, 
they  broke  into  a  very  different  world  from  the  one  which 
had  seen  the  Persian  Wars,  the  empire  of  Alexander,  the 
Augustan  age,  the  founding  of  Constantinople.  Persia 
was  long  past  its  heroic  time,  while  of  the  great  cities 
that  nurtured  the  civilisation  of  which  we  are  the  heirs, 
in  Constantinople  alone  did  there  remain  a  spark  of  the 
antique  light.  The  rest  of  Europe  was  sunk  in  ignorance 
and  superstition,  overrun  by  the  barbarians  whose  de- 
scendants were  to  burn  the  library  of  Louvain  and  destroy 
the  cathedral  of  Rheims.  Everywhere  was  discord  or 
decay.  In  quick  succession  the  champions  of  the  new 
faith  conquered  Syria,  Egypt,  Persia,  thence  marching 
east  and  west  to  the  centre  of  Asia  and  to  the  shores  of 
the  Atlantic.  The  battle  of  Tours,  which  marked  the 
limit  of  their  advance  into  Europe,  was  fought  in  732, 
only  a  hundred  years  after  the  death  of  the  Prophet. 

315 


PERSIAN  MINIATURES 

Far  be  it  from  me  to  deplore  the  victory  of  Charles 
Martel.  But  there  is  no  shadow  of  doubt  that  if  the 
Caliphs  of  Spain  had  not  been  held  back  behind  the 
Pyrenees,  western  Europe  would  have  been  civilised 
much  more  rapidly.  And  the  most  astonishing  thing 
about  it  is  that  the  country  from  which  the  conquerors 
came  had  not  even  the  memory  of  greatness.  The  Proph- 
et himself,  capable  of  dictating  what  is  said  to  be  the 
masterpiece  of  Arabic  literature,  was  incapable  of  writing 
his  own  poetry  or  of  reading  the  chapters  of  the  Koran 
which  others  transcribed.  As  for  his  first  three  suc- 
cessors, they  were  preeminently  men  of  the  sword.  Yet 
so  far  as  contemporary  records  go  it  is  far  more  certain 
that  the  Greek  Bishop  Theophilus  destroyed  the  books  of 
Alexandria  than  that  Abu  Bekr  did,  the  legend  of  his 
burning  them  in  the  public  baths  not  having  been  in- 
vented till  six  hundred  years  later.  And  Omar  built  a 
magnificent  mosque  in  Jerusalem,  while  one  of  the  On> 
mayads  caused  mosaicists  to  come  from  Constantinople 
to  decorate  the  church  he  turned  into  a  mosque  and  his 
successors  invited  to  Damascus  both  Jews  and  Christians 
of  learning.  It  was,  at  any  rate,  that  sudden  maturing 
of  the  Arab  genius,  an  epic  example  of  the  liberation,  of 
the  exaltation,  which  may  be  produced  by  a  widening  of 
horizons.  And  the  civilisation  of  Greece,  brought  into 
contact  with  the  simple  and  ardent  spirit  of  Arabia, 
flowered  once  more  in  a  miraculous  way. 

Only  three  or  four  times  in  history  has  there  been  a 
period  of  so  much  intellectual  eagerness,  of  such  creative 
heat,  of  tolerance  so  rare,  as  when  the  Arab  and  the  Greek 
met  on  the  borders  of  Persia  to  perform  their  miracle, 
aided  by  the  Syrian  and  the  Jew.  For  the  heart  of  the 

316 


AVICENNA 

miracle  was  not  Damascus  but  Baghdad,  and  all  its 
complicated  machinery  was  set  in  motion  in  the  brief 
seventy  years  between  the  laying  out  of  his  new  capital 
by  the  second  Abbasid  Caliph,  Mansur,  in  762  and  the 
death  of  his  great-grandson  Mamun  in  833.  Damascus 
already  had  a  history  and  traditions  when  the  Om- 
mayads  settled  there.  Baghdad— meaning  God-given 
— had  none,  save  as  a  sleepy  Persian  hamlet  on  the 
Tigris  inhabited  chiefly  by  Nestorian  monks.  In 
one  of  their  monasteries  Mansur  took  up  his  residence 
while  he  built  his  "Abode  of  Peace" — he  and  his 
Persian  vizier  the  Barmecide,  son  of  a  Mage  from 
Balkh.  This  association  was  typical  of  the  spirit  in  which 
Mansur  gathered  around  himself  craftsmen,  artists,  and 
scholars  of  the  different  races  of  the  land,  in  his  ambition 
to  rival  the  legendary  splendour  of  Constantinople.  The 
result,  for  art,  was  the  Saracenic  school  whose  works  strew 
the  track  of  the  Arab  from  Transoxiana  to  Spain.  Of  the 
result  for  learning,  Avicenna  is  but  one  example.  And  the 
policy  of  Mansur  was  followed  by  his  immediate  successors. 
His  grandson  Harun  al  Rashid,  otherwise  Aaron  the  Ortho- 
dox, famous  throughout  the  world  for  his  love  of  the 
humanities,  built  a  hospice  in  Jerusalem  for  Christian 
pilgrims  and  granted  Charlemagne  the  custody  of  the  keys 
of  the  Holy  Sepulchre.  As  for  Mamun,  born  of  a  Persian 
mother  and  brought  up  amonge  Persian  and  Greek  philoso- 
phers, he  was  a  builder  of  libraries  and  hospitals,  a  splendid 
patron  of  letters,  and  the  founder  of  that  school  of  trans- 
lators which  brought  Greek  philosophy  into  the  ken  of  the 
East. 

This  great  work  was  all  the  more  remarkable  because 
Greek  learning  had  at  that  time  almost  died  out  in  its 

317 


PERSIAN  MINIATURES 

own  land.  The  task,  as  I  have  said,  had  already  been 
begun  by  the  Syrians.  The  schools  of  Antioch,  Edessa, 
and  Nisibis,  and  to  a  lesser  degree  that  of  Gand-i-Shapur, 
had  translated  many  of  the  Greek  writers  into  Syriac  and 
Persian.  Then  the  Ommayads,  followed  by  Mansur, 
had  caused  not  a  few  of  these  versions  to  be  turned  into 
Arabic.  Under  Mamun,  however,  the  earlier  and  hastier 
translations  were  systematically  revised  and  new  ones 
made.  The  enlightened  Caliph  even  attempted,  without 
too  great  success,  to  buy  or  to  borrow  Greek  manuscripts 
in  Constantinople.  For  the  Syrians  had  worked  chiefly 
from  the  editions  of  Alexandria,  often  unhappily  edited 
by  the  Neo-Platonists.  As  it  was,  their  preference  for 
the  latter  and  for  Aristotle  brought  it  about  that  Plato 
became  less  familiar  to  the  Arabs  than  Plotinus,  Porphyry, 
and  the  Almagest,  while  the  poets  and  dramatists,  alas, 
remained  unknown  to  them.  Harun  al  Rashid,  to  be 
sure,  had  Homer  translated  into  Syriac,  though  not  into 
Arabic.  But  all  the  philosophical  and  scientific  specula- 
tion of  the  Greeks,  from  Pythagoras  down,  became  avail- 
able to  the  Arabs  in  their  own  tongue.  And  when  at  last 
Europe  began  to  take  an  interest  in  learning,  it  was  found 
that  Galen,  for  instance,  was  more  complete-in  Arabic  than 
in  his  own  tongue. 

The  influence  upon  the  impressionable  Arabs  of  this 
glimpse  into  a  new  world  was  prodigious.  The  political 
authority  of  Baghdad  soon  ceased  to  be  acknowledged 
east  of  the  Zagros  Mountains  or  west  of  the  Euphrates; 
but  in  every  country  of  Islam  libraries,  schools,  and  hospit- 
als sprang  up  to  perpetuate  the  work  of  the  Abbasids. 
And  those  institutions  inspired  a  scholarship  far  worthier 
of  the  name  than  anything  known  in  Europe  outside  of 

3.8 


AVICENNA 

Constantinople.  It  was,  of  course,  a  scholarship  much 
more  confused,  much  less  critical,  than  European  scholar- 
ship ultimately  became.  Mansur,  like  every  one  else  in 
his  time,  took  a  deep  interest  in  astrology.  Yet  that  in- 
terest led  back  to  the  study  of  astronomy  which  had  been 
interrupted  in  Alexandria  by  the  zeal  of  Theophilus. 
Mamun  once  more  caused  a  meridian  of  the  earth  to  be 
measured,  and,  less  bigoted  than  St.  Augustine  with 
regard  to  the  form  of  the  earth,  caused  geography  to  be 
taught  from  a  globe.  The  Saracens  adopted  the  simple 
Indian  numerals  which  we  call  Arabic,  perfected  and 
named  the  study  of  algebra,  mapped  the  heavens,  devel- 
oped the  science  of  navigation,  rectified  the  calendar,  made 
experiments  in  optics  and  refraction,  devised  telescopes. 
The  Spanish  Moors,  long  before  the  time  of  Copernicus 
or  Tycho  Brahe,  built  the  Giralda  Tower  in  Seville  for 
an  observatory.  And  when  the  Spaniards  reentered  the 
city  in  1248,  they  so  little  understood  the  use  of  the 
astronomical  instruments  they  found  there  that  they  pi- 
ously consecrated  the  Giralda  as  a  bell  tower. 

Out  of  alchemy,  too,  out  of  the  search  for  the  Philoso- 
pher's Stone  and  the  Elixir  of  Life,  was  born  a  true  chemis- 
try. A  ninth-century  alchemist  of  Baghdad,  somewhat 
vaguely  known  as  Jafar,  bears  the  same  relation  to  chemis- 
try that  Hippocrates  does  to  medicine.  Before  his  time 
no  acid  stronger  than  vinegar  was  known;  he  was  the  first 
to  discover  nitric  acid  and  aqua  regia.  His  follower, 
Rhazes,  or  Ibn  Zakarya,  of  Rei,  experimenting  in  precipi- 
tates, gases,  and  the  metaphysical  spirits  of  things,  pro- 
duced absolute  alcohol  and  sulphuric  acid.  Phosphorus, 
described  by  the  Saracens  as  an  artificial  carbuncle,  was 
another  of  their  contributions  to  chemistry,  They 

319 


PERSIAN  MINIATURES 

i 

made  pioneer  calculations  in  specific  gravity.  And  they, 
while  our  ancestors  were  treating  disease  by  means  of 
charms,  amulets,  and  exorcisms,  began  to  apply  chemistry 
to  medicine.  If  it  was  but  a  beginning,  and  if  their  con- 
tributions now  seem  slight,  we  must  remember  that  the 
only  advance  in  medicine  from  the  time  of  Erosistratus 
and  Hierophilus  of  Alexandria  down  -to  the  seventeenth 
century  was  made  by  the  Arabs.  Among  the  237  treatises 
of  Rhazes,  who  flourished  from  about  850  to  about  932, 
was  one  giving  the  earliest  description  of  measles  and 
small  pox,  and  adumbrating  the  germ  theory.  Of  Avi- 
cenna  and  the  place  he  held  in  mediaeval  medicine  I  have 
already  spoken.  Abulcasis,  or  Abul  Kasim,  a  Spanish 
contemporary  of  his,  practised  surgery  little  less  scien- 
tifically than  he  would  have  done  to-day,  and  wrote  a 
surgical  treatise  in  which  is  found  the  first  known  descrip- 
tion of  the  syringe.  Averroes  later  conceived  the  idea  of 
making  individual  studies  of  the  different  diseases  and 
their  treatment,  eventually  carried  out  not  by  himself 
but  by  one  of  his  pupils. 

In  other  directions  the  Saracens  made  progress  no  less 
marked.  They  anticipated  Newton  in  the  study  of 
gravity,  though  it  remained  for  the  great  Englishman  to 
make  a  universal  application  of  the  principle.  They  were 
much  nearer  those  other  Englishmen  Darwin  and  Wallace 
in  their  view  of  the  development  of  life  than  their  Christian 
contemporaries.  I  shall  not  claim  for  the  former  the 
superiority  in  art  and  letters,  though  Saracenic  architec- 
ture, the  "Thousand  and  One  Nights,"  and  the  important 
Mohammedan  literature  of  travel,  geography,  and  history 
were  of  surprisingly  early  date.  As  concerns  breeding, 
habits,  and  comfort  the  Arabs  had  an  unquestioned  su- 

320 


AVICENNA 

periority.  The  Saracen  cities  were  paved  and  clean 
long  before  those  of  France.  London  was  seven  hundred 
years  later  than  Cordova  in  lighting  her  streets  at  night. 
The  first  clock  seen  in  Europe  was  a  present  to  Charle- 
magne from  Harun  al  Rashid.  Through  the  Moors  of 
Spain  were  introduced  to  our  fathers  such  novelties  as 
paper,  cotton,  rice,  sugar,  and  several  fruits  and  flowers 
previously  unknown  to  them.  And  there  is  no  end  to  the 
European  words  derived  from  Arabic  or  Persian. 

Was  it  weariness,  in  the  end,  that  caused  the  Saracen 
inspiration  to  flicker  and  die  out?  Was  it  the  constant 
hammering  of  Turks  and  Christians,  the  hopeless  dis- 
integration of  that  empire  which  had  stretched  from  the 
Oxus  to  the  Pillars  of  Hercules?  At  any  rate,  the  pendu- 
lum of  history  swung  again,  waking  Europe  up  from  its 
thousand  years  of  reaction.  And  it  is  strange  how  there 
seems  to  be  something  potent  and  immortal  in  that  old 
Greek  learning,  which  finally  wrought  again  in  Europe 
the  miracle  it  had  wrought  in  Asia  so  long  before.  Yet 
could  anything  be  stranger  than  the  journey  it  made, 
from  land  to  land,  from  tongue  to  tongue,  around  the 
whole  circuit  of  the  Mediterranean,  till  it  came  back 
through  Spain  to  Europe,  to  the  farther  shore  of  its  own 
Ionian  Sea?  During  the  twelfth  century  there  arose  in 
Spain  and  Sicily  schools  of  translators  like  those  of  Edessa 
and  Baghdad,  whose  work  it  was  to  render  into  Latin, 
generally  from  Arabic,  sometimes  from  Syriac  or  Hebrew, 
what  was  left  of  Greek  literature.  A  little  of  it  had  been 
spared  in  Constantinople;  but  Constantinople  was  too  far 
away  and  too  hostile  to  be  of  any  help.  Only  after  the 
Crusaders  captured  Constantinople  in  1204  did  there  appear 
in  the  West  a  feworiginal  Greek  manuscripts.  Inthemean- 

321 


PERSIAN  MINIATURES 

time  there  grew  up  the  mendicant  orders,  among  whom, 
and  particularly  among  the  Dominicans,  were  great  friends 
of  learning.  Then  in  the  twelfth  and  thirteenth  centuries 
were  founded  in  turn  the  universities  of  Bologna,  Paris, 
and  Oxford,  earliest  of  their  kind  in  the  West,  inaugurating 
the  so-called  scholastic  period.  The  German  universities 
came  a  little  later,  as  befitted  a  race  not  converted  till  the 
eighth  century  by  English  Benedictines!  This  scholastic 
period  occupied  the  thirteenth  and  much  of  the  fourteenth 
centuries,  and  was  a  time  of  busy  translating,  comparing, 
revising,  philosophising,  and  theologising,  to  say  nothing 
of  anathematising.  For  the  church  was  slow  to  give  up  its 
old  antipathy  to  the  Greeks;  and  here  worse  heathen 
than  Aristotle  were  concerned,  under  whose  wing  Arab 
and  Jewish  doctors  not  a  few  made  their  appearance  in 
Christendom. 

So  it  was  that  Avicenna,  the  Persian  of  Bokhara  and 
Hamadan,  became  one  of  the  great  names  of  mediaeval 
Europe,  exercising  an  empire  over  men's  minds  such  as 
was  exercised  scarcely  by  Aristotle  himself.  In  1453 
Constantinople  fell  into  the  hands  of  the  Turks.  The 
Greek  refugees  who  fled  to  Italy  took  with  them  precious 
manuscripts,  and  the  Renaissance  received  its  final  im- 
pulse. Yet  in  spite  of  the  continued  hostility  of  the 
church,  in  spite  of  the  natural  ill  will  between  Europe  and 
Asia,  in  spite  of  the  just  preference  of  scholars  for  original 
Greek  manuscripts  to  those  which  had  been  three  or 
four  times  translated,  the  last  of  the  Arab  philosophers  of 
the  East  acquired  so  great  credit  that  not  until  1650,  when 
medicine  finally  began  to  feel  the  impulse  of  the  Renais- 
sance, was  Avicenna's  Canon  dropped  from  the  curricula 
of  Montpellier  and  Louvain.  The  book  had  then,  since 

322 


AVICENNA 

its  first  printings  in  Naples,  Rome,  and  Venice,  passed 
through  thirty  or  more  Latin  editions.  And  to  the  end 
of  time  no  one  who  wishes  to  acquaint  himself  with  the 
learning  of  the  Near  East,  to  study  the  history  of  philos- 
ophy or  medicine,  or  to  understand  the  evolution  of 
European  culture,  can  escape  knowing  the  name  of 
Avicenna. 

Such,  O  Virtue,  O  Justice,  O  Eternal  Irony  of  Life,  are 
the  accidents  which  may  befall  a  plumber  of  infinity,  who 
sought  truth  not  only  in  wells,  and  wisdom  on  the  lips  of 
dancers ! 


323 


•  .  v^vviX 

M 


XIX 
THE  CARAVAN 

eyes  I  saw  in  the  desert 
That  the  deliberate  man  outstripped  him  who  had  hurried  on. 
The  wind-footed  steed  is  broken  down  in  his  course, 
While  the  camel-driver  jogs  on  with  his  beast  to  the  end  of  the 
journey. 

Sadi:  THE  FLOWER  GARDEN 


ONE  of  my  study  windows,  catching  all  the  sun 
of  the  south,  faces  a  narrow  tilted  country  of 
gardens,  darkly  walled  by  a  semicircle  of  moun- 
tains.    One  of  my  bedroom  windows  gives  me 
a  glimpse  of  sparser  gardens,  and  the  clay-coloured  town, 
and  the  plain  that  dips  and  rises  delicately  against  the 
north.     But  both  rooms  look  east,  into  the  desert. 

It  is  the  kind  of  desert  which  the  Persians  call  biaban, 
not  the  vaster  and  more  desolate  lut.  Beyond  our  own, 
however,  no  garden  wall  ventures  into  it.  Neither  house 

324 


THE  CARAVAN 

nor  poplar  breaks  the  simplicity  of  its  flowing  lines.  The 
empty  land  droops  away  toward  the  left,  intercepted  only 
by  the  Musalla,  that  barren  bluff  which  archaeologists  like 
to  fancy  the  site  of  seven-walled  Ecbatana.  Not  quite 
opposite  my  windows  a  smaller  hill,  bare  and  pointed 
like  a  cone,  pricks  the  horizon.  Beyond  it  lies  an  in- 
visible hollow,  the  farther  edge  of  which  marks  the  limit 
of  my  visible  world. 

Of  the  sights  to  be  seen  from  the  four  sides  of  our  house, 
this  view  offers  least.  Yet  because  it  is  mine  I  like  it, 
and  because  it  is  so  open  and  solitary,  and  because  the 
faithful  Persian  sun  rarely  disappoints  me  there  of  his 
morning  miracle,  and  because  at  night  stars  hang  there  of  a 
brilliancy  I  have  never  seen,  and  so  low  that  I  can  watch 
them  from  my  bed.  And  I  am  new  enough  from  the  West 
never  to  forget  that  those  windows  look  into  Asia.  Be- 
yond that  uneven  rim  of  the  East  lies  Kum.  Beyond 
Kum  is  the  lut,  that  great  desert  which  has  small  reason 
to  be  less  renowned  than  Gobi  or  the  Sahara.  Beyond  the 
lut  are  Afghanistan,  and  Kashmir,  and  Tibet. 

In  the  morning  the  sun  looks  strange  to  me,  because  he 
is  fresh  from  Tibet  and  Kashmir  and  Afghanistan.  At 
night  the  stars  make  me  wonder  what  other  watchers 
see  them — what  riders  of  camels,  what  prowlers  of  the 
dark,  what  sitters  by  red  embers.  How  many  times  have 
1  made  in  imagination  that  journey  eastward  from  my 
window,  across  wastes  of  sand  and  salt  and  poisoned 
water,  through  forests  and  glaciers  that  prop  the  sky, 
into  valleys  the  wildest  and  most  secret  of  the  earth — 
that  journey  which  no  man  of  the  West  could  make  alone, 
or  undisguised,  and  come  alive  into  the  uplands  of  China! 
And  if  he  did,  no  man  of  all  he  met  could  understand  the 

325 


PERSIAN  MINIATURES 

reason  of  his  coming.  They  have  no  curiosity  about  us, 
the  lands  we  live  in,  the  things  we  live  for.  Why  have  we 
so  continuing  a  curiosity  about  them?  Is  it  that  in  those 
distant  and  silent  places  we  would  not  once  hear  a  factory 
whistle  or  see  a  railroad  track?  Is  it  the  lure  of  their 
jealous  seclusion?  Of  their  cloudy  antiquity?  Or  is  it  a 
simple  astonishment  that  men  can  be  content  with  so 
little — find  the  sight  of  the  sun  enough,  and  the  sound  of 
known  voices?  Who  knows  but  there  might  be  in  it 
some  vague  ancestral  stirring  of  nostalgia,  or  a  secret 
question  of  our  own  unrest?  What  if,  after  all,  they  of 
the  East  see  the  end  from  the  beginning,  and  live  a  life 
more  intense  than  we?  But  even  there  whistles  begin 
to  sound.  Nearer  and  nearer  creep  the  rails  that  thread 
the  ends  of  the  world.  And  what  then? 

I  could  never  tell  all  I  see  in  the  desert  at  night. 

In  the  daytime  I  am  more  concerned  with  what  passes 
between  our  garden  wall  and  the  crumpled  rim  of  the 
horizon.  There  is  no  great  passing  on  that  tawny  slope 
save  of  light  and  shadow,  for  the  highways  all  march  in 
other  directions  out  of  the  town.  Runnels  of  water  flash 
in  the  sun  at  their  seasons.  In  the  autumn  and  in  the 
spring  oxen  tickle  the  earth  with  the  little  wooden  plough 
of  Asia.  There  is  a  time  when  I  watch  the  rippling  of 
wheat  like  a  lake.  That  is  also  the  time  when  I  may 
hear,  heightened  by  distance,  a  melancholy  singing.  Peas- 
ants occasionally  pass,  with  russet  rags  flapping  about 
bare  knees.  A  rare  horseman  gallops  afar,  his  dark 
mantle  eddying  behind  him.  Mules  and  donkeys  are 
less  rare,  tinkling  from  nowhere  to  nowhere. 

But  silence  is  so  much  the  note  of  the  place  that  I 
was  astonished  one  winter  afternoon  to  hear  a  new  sound, 

326 


THE  CARAVAN 

a  jingle-jangle  that  grew  louder  as  I  listened.  I  was 
the  more  astonished  because  snow  was  deep  on  the  ground, 
and  passers  had  been  fewer  than  ever.  I  went  to  the  win- 
dow to  look. 

Camels!  Out  of  the  crack  between  Musalla  and  the 
town  they  came,  the  dark  line  of  them  lengthening 
obliquely  across  the  snow  till  it  reached  the  corner  of 
the  garden  above  ours.  I  am  a  child  about  camels.  I 
shall  never  see  enough  of  them.  It  is  not  only  their 
strangeness,  however,  which  for  us  of  the  West  makes 
them  the  symbol  of  Asia.  They  are  immensely  decora- 
tive in  themselves — though  they  are  so  much  the  colour 
of  the  lands  they  live  in  that  they  have  a  curious  power  of 
invisibility,  for  creatures  so  large,  unless  you  catch  them 
against  the  sky.  But  the  snow  brought  out  the  sil- 
houettes of  these  the  more  fantastically  because  of  the 
loads  lashed  on  either  side  of  their  humps.  The  pommel 
of  one  saddle  spindled  up  into  a  staff  gay  with  coloured 
wool,  ending  in  a  flat  hand  of  brass.  I  caught  glimpses 
of  saddle-cloths  and  big  saddlebags,  woven  like  the 
precious  rugs  of  the  country.  Necklaces  of  bright  beads 
made  another  touch  of  colour,  or  dangling  plaques  of 
beads,  with  much  blue  in  them  to  ward  off  the  Evil  Eye. 
And  the  camels  wore  almost  as  many  bells  as  beads. 
Some  carried  them  around  their  necks  in  strings.  A  few 
beasts,  bigger  than  the  rest,  had  one  great  copper  bell 
slung  from  the  saddle,  which  rang  out  a  slow  ding-dong 
amid  the  general  jingle-jangle.  It  made  one  think  of 
Charpentier's  "Impressions  d'ltalie,"  and  the  way  he 
suggests  the  sound  of  mule  bells.  But  this  was  something 
deeper  and  wilder,  evoking  the  endless  marches  of  the 
desert. 

327 


PERSIAN  MINIATURES 

There  were  more  camels  in  that  caravan  than  I  had 
ever  seen  before.  It  did  not  occur  to  me  to  count  them 
until  many  of  them  were  out  of  sight.  Then  I  counted 
nearly  three  hundred.  They  marched  single  file  in  groups 
of  six  or  seven,  each  group  roped  together  like  barges 
in  a  tow  and  led  by  a  man.  Many  of  the  men  had  an 
odd  Mongolian  look  in  their  tight  skin  caps,  with  the  fur 
or  lamb's  wool  inside.  The  eyes  of  almost  all  of  them 
were  inflamed  from  the  glare  of  the  sun  on  the  snow. 
Where  had  they  come  from?  Where  were  they  going? 
I  had  no  tongue  to  ask,  nor  could  I  have  understood  if 
they  told  me. 

They  disappeared  at  last  among  the  bare  gardens. 
But  that  strange,  complicated  music,  punctuated  by  the 
deep  notes  of  the  big  copper  bells,  sounded  so  long  in  the 
thin  winter  air  that  I  could  not  be  quite  sure  when  it 
ceased  to  sound.  Indeed  I  often  hear  it  now  at  night, 
when  I  look  at  the  low  stars  of  the  desert  and  think  of 
Afghanistan,  and  Kashmir,  and  Tibet. 


328 


THE  COUNTRY  LIFE  PRESS 
GARDEN  CITY,  N.  Y. 


, 


UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA  LIBRARY 


